Being a bank analyst for the last five years has given me the opportunity to be involved in analyzing several wind farm projects in Estonia.
It is always a question of PROFITABILITY for both sides of the table (both the lender and the borrower), so therefore it is very difficult to see how wind energy can ever be free for mankind.
Let’s assume that free here means that by harvesting you can have a “free” access to the electricity if you are able to pay for it and also are connected to the electricity grid.
Actually being able to use green energy in our country right now means that I as the loyal taxpayer also have to pay a special subsidy to the local transmission system operator who then forwards this to the wind farm operator. To put it very simply I pay for the fact that there is a possibility to use green energy and also for the produced electricity itself.
So in my view exploiting the rich wind energy literally means GREED (exploitation+green = greed) although in economic terms it is a simple matter of taking higher RISK and getting REWARDED for it. And actually making profit helps to build even more wind farms, becoming even greener but also increasing exploitation. In a sense that doesn’t feel so free or clean, now does it?
There are also a number of technological issues that raise several questions about how clean, free and abundant wind energy for mankind really is.
At first glance (for any type of renewable energy for that matter), wind power seems like a straightforward proposition. Every megawatt generated by wind should reduce fossil fuel power plant demand by a megawatt. More wind generators should mean less fossil fuel burned.
But, because of the realities of providing reliable electrical power to the grid, we do not get anything approaching a megawatt reduction in demand for every megawatt of wind power installed.
The modern electrical power grid is designed and managed to operate 99.9% of the time with less than a 2% variance in voltage, regardless of the load swings placed on the system.
When we wake in the morning we turn on our lights, radio, and coffee pot and get ready for the day. Before we get to our places of work, they turn on lights and increase heating or cooling loads to bring temperatures to comfortable levels. Air compressors, assembly line drives, computers, and other industrial machines by the millions fire up almost in unison, all fed by electricity taken from the grid.
On a typical day, a major city will increase load demand on its power plants by more than a thousand megawatts (million kilowatts), it will happen within a couple of hours, and it has to happen with PERFECTION.
To accomplish this engineering feat, every generator (and there are many) involved with the grid must operate in HARMONY with the others.
Large steam driven power plants provide base load, or the large, steady portion of the electrical load that is most PREDICTABLE. No form of renewable energy source can provide this base load that we all depend on. At least not yet.
Smaller generators, often gas turbines, can be started with the flick of a switch to pick up load increases. Only hydroelectric power plants can do something similar at the moment.
It is always a question of PROFITABILITY for both sides of the table (both the lender and the borrower), so therefore it is very difficult to see how wind energy can ever be free for mankind.
Let’s assume that free here means that by harvesting you can have a “free” access to the electricity if you are able to pay for it and also are connected to the electricity grid.
Actually being able to use green energy in our country right now means that I as the loyal taxpayer also have to pay a special subsidy to the local transmission system operator who then forwards this to the wind farm operator. To put it very simply I pay for the fact that there is a possibility to use green energy and also for the produced electricity itself.
So in my view exploiting the rich wind energy literally means GREED (exploitation+green = greed) although in economic terms it is a simple matter of taking higher RISK and getting REWARDED for it. And actually making profit helps to build even more wind farms, becoming even greener but also increasing exploitation. In a sense that doesn’t feel so free or clean, now does it?
There are also a number of technological issues that raise several questions about how clean, free and abundant wind energy for mankind really is.
At first glance (for any type of renewable energy for that matter), wind power seems like a straightforward proposition. Every megawatt generated by wind should reduce fossil fuel power plant demand by a megawatt. More wind generators should mean less fossil fuel burned.
But, because of the realities of providing reliable electrical power to the grid, we do not get anything approaching a megawatt reduction in demand for every megawatt of wind power installed.
The modern electrical power grid is designed and managed to operate 99.9% of the time with less than a 2% variance in voltage, regardless of the load swings placed on the system.
When we wake in the morning we turn on our lights, radio, and coffee pot and get ready for the day. Before we get to our places of work, they turn on lights and increase heating or cooling loads to bring temperatures to comfortable levels. Air compressors, assembly line drives, computers, and other industrial machines by the millions fire up almost in unison, all fed by electricity taken from the grid.
On a typical day, a major city will increase load demand on its power plants by more than a thousand megawatts (million kilowatts), it will happen within a couple of hours, and it has to happen with PERFECTION.
To accomplish this engineering feat, every generator (and there are many) involved with the grid must operate in HARMONY with the others.
Large steam driven power plants provide base load, or the large, steady portion of the electrical load that is most PREDICTABLE. No form of renewable energy source can provide this base load that we all depend on. At least not yet.
Smaller generators, often gas turbines, can be started with the flick of a switch to pick up load increases. Only hydroelectric power plants can do something similar at the moment.
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