Wind Power

Wind Power: The Wave of the Future

The eagerly awaited Bush energy plan released on May 17, 2001, disappointed many people because it largely overlooked the potential contribution of raising energy efficiency. It also overlooked the enormous potential of wind power, which is likely to add more to U.S. generating capacity over the next 20 years than coal.

In short, the authors of the plan appear to be out of touch with what is happening in the world energy economy, fashioning an energy plan more appropriate for the early twentieth century rather than the early twenty-first century. They emphasized the role of coal, but world coal use peaked in 1996 and has declined some 11 percent since then as countries have turned away from this climate-disrupting fuel. Even China, which rivals the United States as a coal burning country, has reduced its coal use by 24 percent since 1996.

Meanwhile, world wind power use has multiplied nearly fourfold over the last five years, a growth rate matched only by the computer industry. In the United States, the American Wind Energy Association projects a staggering 60 percent growth in wind-generating capacity this year.

Wind power was once confined to California, but during the last three years, wind farms coming online in Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have boosted U.S. capacity by half from 1,680 megawatts to 2,550 megawatts. The 1,500 or more megawatts to be added this year will be located in a dozen states. A 300-megawatt wind farm under construction on the Oregon/Washington border is currently the world's largest.

But this is only the beginning. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) indicated in February that it wanted to buy 1,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity and requested proposals. Much to its surprise, it received enough to build 2,600 megawatts of capacity in five states, with the potential of expanding these sites to over 4,000 megawatts. BPA, which may accept most of these proposals, expects to have at least one site online by the end of this year.

A 3,000-megawatt wind farm in the early planning stages in South Dakota, near the Iowa border, is 10 times the size of the Oregon/Washington wind farm. Named Rolling Thunder, this project, initiated by Dehlsen Associates and drawing on the leadership of Jim Dehlsen, a wind energy pioneer in California, is designed to feed power to the Midwestern region around Chicago. This proposed project is not only large by wind power standards, it is one of the largest energy projects of any kind in the world today.

Advances in wind turbine technology, drawing heavily from the aerospace industry, have lowered the cost of wind power from 38 cents per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to 3 to 6 cents today depending on the wind site. Wind, now competitive with fossil fuels, is already cheaper in some locations than oil or gas-fired power. With major corporations, such as ABB, Shell International, and Enron plowing resources into this field, further cost cuts are in prospect.

Wind is a vast, worldwide source of energy. The U.S. Great Plains are the Saudi Arabia of wind power. Three wind-rich U.S. states-North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas-have enough harnessable wind to meet national electricity needs. China can double its existing generating capacity from wind alone. Densely populated Western Europe can supply all of its electricity needs from offshore wind power.

Today Denmark, the world leader in wind turbine technology and manufacture, is getting 15 percent of its electricity from wind power. For Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany, it is 19 percent and, for some parts of the state, 75 percent. Spain's industrial state of Navarra, starting from scratch six years ago, now gets 24 percent of its electricity from wind.

As wind generating costs fall and as concern about climate change escalates, more and more countries are climbing onto the wind energy bandwagon. In December, France announced it will develop 5,000 megawatts of wind power by 2010. Also in December, Argentina announced a plan to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind power in Patagonia In April, the United Kingdom accepted offshore bids for 1,500 megawatts of wind power. In May, a report from Beijing indicated that China plans to develop some 2,500 megawatts of wind power by 2005.

The growth in wind power is consistently outrunning earlier estimates. The European Wind Energy Association, which in 1996 had set a target of 40,000 megawatts for Europe in 2010, recently upped it to 60,000 megawatts.

The Bush plan to add 393,000 megawatts of electricity nationwide by 2020 could be satisfied from wind alone. Money spent on wind-generated electricity tends to remain in the community, providing income, jobs, and tax revenue, bolstering local economies. One large advanced design wind turbine, occupying a quarter acre of land, can easily yield a farmer or rancher $2,000 in royalties per year while providing the community with $100,000 of electricity. U.S. farmers and ranchers, who own most of the wind rights in the country, are now joining environmentalists to lobby for development of this abundant alternative to fossil fuel.

Once we get cheap electricity from wind, we can use it to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen. Hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the new, highly efficient, fuel cell engine that every major automobile manufacturer is now working on. Daimler Chrysler plans to be on the market with fuel cell-powered cars in 2003. Ford, Toyota, and Honda will probably not be far behind. William Ford, Chairman of Ford Motor Company, says he expects to preside over the demise of the internal combustion engine.

Surplus wind power can be stored as hydrogen and used in fuel cells or gas turbines to generate electricity, leveling supply when winds are variable. Wind, once seen as a cornerstone of the new energy economy, may turn out to be its foundation. The wind meteorologist who analyzes wind regimes and identifies the best sites for wind farms will play a role in the new energy economy comparable to that of the petroleum geologist in the old energy economy.

With the advancing technologies for harnessing wind and powering motor vehicles with hydrogen, we can now see a future where farmers and ranchers can supply not only much of the country's electricity, but much of the hydrogen to fuel its fleet of automobiles as well. For the first time, the United States has the technology and resources to divorce itself from Middle Eastern oil.

In addition to neglecting the potential of wind, the Bush energy strategy pays only lip service to climate stabilization. This is a high-risk strategy. With business as usual, the International Panel on Climate Change recently projected a global temperature rise during this century of up to 6 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit). If this rise occurs, the rest of the world may hold the United States, the leading CO2 emitter, responsible.

What the United States needs now is an energy plan for this century, one that takes into account not only recent technological advances in wind power, fuel cells, and hydrogen generators, but also the need to stabilize climate. Perhaps Congress will bring the energy plan into the twenty-first century and restore U.S. leadership in the fast-changing world energy economy.

Additional data and information sources at www.earth-policy.org or contact Shane Ratterman at sratterman@earth-policy.org.

Green Power in Traverse City

The Traverse City wind turbine is a startling sight, even if you are expecting it. It's located just to the north of M-72 a mile or so west of Traverse City. You drive uphill going away from the bay; then the road levels off for a bit; and there it is. In the middle of a farm field, standing on a lawn-sized patch of grass is a slim white tower with a giant three-bladed fan on top.

The steel tower has the approximate proportions of a pencil, if you can picture a pencil 160 feet tall. The base is slightly heavier than the top, so there is a slight taper going up. The diameter of the rotor is 144 feet, so the tip of the blades are never closer to the ground than 88 feet.

It produces power whenever the wind speed is 10 miles an hour or greater, producing 600 kilowatts at a wind speed of 32 miles per hour. If the wind is moving faster than this, the pitch of the blades change to lessen wind resistance of the fan while maintaining peak design power. With average annual winds of 14-15 mph, the turbine actually produces enough power for 200 or so homes.

This is the largest wind turbine in the continental United States and Michigan's first utility scale wind generator. It was manufactured in Denmark by a company named Vestas, and is owned by Traverse City Light and Power. TCL & P is a municipal utility, owned by the citizens of Traverse City. The utility also owns three hydro-power dams and four steam turbines in the Bayside plant in Traverse City. Additionally, the utility has partial ownership of generating facilities near Grand Haven and on the St. Clair River.

The cost of building this installation was about $1000 per kilowatt. The cost of building a coal or gas-fired plant is $500-600 per kilowatt. Of course, with the fossil fuel plants, there is an additional operating cost for fuel to burn. Even so, electricity from the wind turbine is more expensive to produce, when looking at the out-of-pocket expenses of the power company, than electricity from "conventional" plants. To make its books balance, the utility charges a premium of 1.58 cents per kilowatt-hour for wind-generated electricity, approximately $7.58 per month per customer, or about a 20% premium.

There is a waiting list for the green rate program. Conventional economic analysis would say this could not, would not, should not happen; but there it is. Each green customer annually avoids the burning of three tons of coal, which would release 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 60 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and 40 pounds of nitrogen oxides into the air. This prevents a certain amount of global warming, acid rain, and smog. These are some of the costs to society of fossil fuel use, costs that do not show up on the books of any corporation. Of course it is worth $7.58 a month to turn on your lights without causing degradation to the environment.