Wind Energy in Iowa...Your Thoughts

[Sigmapolis]

This thread is a great representation of the right. What are they FOR?

Doing nothing is always an option, to be fair. And usually the best one.

The obvious market-based policy (and this is not "on the right" whatsoever, especially with Mr. Clean Coal Covfefe "Tariff Man" and his ilk running things nowadays)...

-- put a price on carbon
-- let the market sort out optimizing the energy sector internalizing that price
-- use the money you get to reduce some other tax and/or treat it like Alaska does

...and you are done.

Prices are a signal. Let them do their job.

This is one thing I would love to tax out of existence.

 

[RonBurgundy]

This thread is a great representation of the right. What are they FOR?

This is a false narrative. The two main tax breaks that support wind and solar are the production tax credit (PTC) and the investment tax credit (ITC). Both have been routinely extended on largely bipartisan votes.

Some of the most supportive states for wind development and integration are the reddest states, ie Kansas, Iowa and Texas.

There are currently no new coal plants under construction and hundreds of coal plants have been or will be shut down. The primary driver of the shut downs is poor economics due to new renewables and relatively cheap natural gas. Natural gas has been historically cheap for the last decade due to new technologies of horizontal drilling and fracking. Congress had little or nothing to do with this, it has been the private sector that discovered and drilled in the shale regions that were previously uneconomical. There is so much economical natural gas production that the US is building LNG facilities to export gas to Europe and Asia.

Technology will continue to be the driver of reducing our carbon footprint. Economical battery technology is the holy grail that will allow the grid to balance unpredictive wind and solar energy production. Moore's law needs to kick in on the efficiency and cost of large scale batteries, and we will see a paradigm shift in energy production.

We should also be investing heavily in the next generation of small modular reactors (SMR) that are carbon free and massively safer than old technology.

 

[Sigmapolis]

This is a false narrative. The two main tax breaks that support wind and solar are the production tax credit (PTC) and the investment tax credit (ITC). Both have been routinely extended on largely bipartisan votes.

Some of the most supportive states for wind development and integration are the reddest states, ie Kansas, Iowa and Texas.

There are currently no new coal plants under construction and hundreds of coal plants have been or will be shut down. The primary driver of the shut downs is poor economics due to new renewables and relatively cheap natural gas. Natural gas has been historically cheap for the last decade due to new technologies of horizontal drilling and fracking. Congress had little or nothing to do with this, it has been the private sector that discovered and drilled in the shale regions that were previously uneconomical. There is so much economical natural gas production that the US is building LNG facilities to export gas to Europe and Asia.

Technology will continue to be the driver of reducing our carbon footprint. Economical battery technology is the holy grail that will allow the grid to balance unpredictive wind and solar energy production. Moore's law needs to kick in on the efficiency and cost of large scale batteries, and we will see a paradigm shift in energy production.

We should also be investing heavily in the next generation of small modular reactors (SMR) that are carbon free and massively safer than old technology.

How dare you let your intelligent, nuanced analysis that recognizes that most of what goes in throughout the world is outside of the realm of politics get in the way of the blue jerseys = good, red jerseys = bad or red jerseys = good, blue jerseys = bad and politics is the only thing that really matters narratives at play. You should be ashamed of yourself.

 

[motorcy90]

If it can survive without govenment subsidies, it would be okay. It is some of the most expensive electricity to produce.

Some of the large power producers will not use wind energy in their business plans as wind will not break even without large subsidies.

every energy sector has government subsidies of some sort, its not just wind. the PTC for wind starts its decline next year with it completely expiring in 2024 currently, companies are still lining up projects for after that time frame. Wind energy currently is as cheap if not cheaper then most forms of natural gas production on a global scale, and lot of the still developing countries are turning to wind power for their needs as costs are still coming down further in the industry. The top 10 energy producers in the US only one doesn't use wind power that I know of Southern Power Company, and that's more or less because of location being in the SE qtr of the country probably with not very good wind conditions to begin with. globally every top 10 provider uses wind energy heavily.

Just like any energy source, there are pro and cons. The last few years there have been numerous leaps in technology and efficiency making it more feasible.
Cons:
Impacts wildlife patterns and neighbors
ROI is low
Lifespan of a windmill use to only be ~15 years (not sure if this has increased)
Use to not be sustainable without mandates/government funding, etc.
EDIT: as it was pointed out I forgot the most obvious - Wind energy is inconsistent and can cause problems with an electrical grid.

Return on investment was never a big issue, most older parks are/were completely profitable within the first 10-12 years at most, and turbine life span is more or less in the 20-25 year before being re-powered for another 20-25 years at least. The little 60ft tower at DMACC is approaching 30 yrs old and came out of the desert in California before it was installed at the school. and yes as with a lot of emerging technology it did take some government backing to start growing here in the US. Other markets are exploding now with out government backing even.

Pitch (blade angle) system failed. These can be either electric or hydraulic. The brake system is also failing to apply. "Runaway turbine". Its definitely possible that they had a grid outage and the emergency pitch system failed to return the blades to feathered position. Add in a leaky valve on the hydraulic brake station and voila. These catastrophic failures are happening less and less, as obviously the engineering of these machines is getting much better.

yep this was an older turbine that didn't have a lot of the safety/ double redundancy systems newer models have built in. in almost all new towers blade pitch angle is the main braking force of the tower with the hydraulic caliper only being applied after the rotor has slowed to a certain speed. if the tower faults the blades pitch to feathered 90 degrees into the wind, if they lose grid power/function they cycle to 90 off of battery backups, and the tower runs its own safety tests on those for checking charge/function after so many hours of operation automatically.

 

[Tre4ISU]

Yeah, tillage practices are rapidly adjusting to both the economic climate for agriculture, and the fact that we're starting to get rain by the foot on a regular basis.

I think the general public fails to understand the extent that grain farmers want to prevent soil loss, and take measures to do so.

Well, and we also know how to manage it now, through many years of a bunch of things that didn't work. Also, as people have been able to provide more sufficient drainage, it's become much more viable.

 

[Tre4ISU]

This thread is a great representation of the right. What are they FOR?

Most are for nuclear power.

 

[motorcy90]

I drive through the north central part of the state quite often where there are structures for miles. On a nice windy day, it always makes me wonder why only a certain percentage of those things are turning. Why wouldn't we make all of the glorious electricity that we can when the wind is doing the work for us?

in all honesty it could be the power company underestimated the wind conditions for the day and curtailed the farm to prevent over production. it happened a few times last month at my park where cipco/alliant said hey we don't need this production output currently, and remotely shutdown our towers overnight.

I work in the industry. I can't tell you about the overall carbon footprint. In the past few years, however, companies such as Vestas and Seimens are producing some MASSIVE energy producing machines. Larger than what we see here in Iowa. We're talking 5-7MW/hr. With an expected lifespan of 30 years. I believe they would be cost effective even without the tax breaks.

then I'm sure you also now what GE and MHI/Vestas have going for the offshore monsters 10-12MW/hr outputs. wish the offshore business would take off more in the US as I would love to work on those. the company I work for is pushing it's new 4-5MW tower and installed the first ones in the states over in ND not to long ago, I was over there for a week of training and wasn't lucky enough to get a chance to climb one. but did walk around the one they were still in the process of erecting and damn was it impressive.

This is a false narrative. The two main tax breaks that support wind and solar are the production tax credit (PTC) and the investment tax credit (ITC). Both have been routinely extended on largely bipartisan votes.

Some of the most supportive states for wind development and integration are the reddest states, ie Kansas, Iowa and Texas.

There are currently no new coal plants under construction and hundreds of coal plants have been or will be shut down. The primary driver of the shut downs is poor economics due to new renewables and relatively cheap natural gas.

Technology will continue to be the driver of reducing our carbon footprint. Economical battery technology is the holy grail that will allow the grid to balance unpredictive wind and solar energy production. Moore's law needs to kick in on the efficiency and cost of large scale batteries, and we will see a paradigm shift in energy production.

We should also be investing heavily in the next generation of small modular reactors (SMR) that are carbon free and massively safer than old technology.

the current PTC ends in 2024 with a decrease starting next year each year till then. and yeah SD and ND are both starting to wake up to the benefits of wind power over coal. but I don't think batteries are honestly the best overall solution but as another poster states SMRs backing up wind would be a good thing overall.

 

[mdclone]

I'll give you a hoax to chew on: AOC and her absolutely ludicrous "green initiative" suggesting that it is possible to have a carbon free energy footprint in the near future that doesn't involve nuclear power.

That's my biggest problem with people that say man made climate change is the biggest issue we face today but won't consider nuclear. If they really believed that they should be pushing nuclear hard, because it's the only feasible zero emission alternative right now. Couple that with the fact we have designs that are passively melt down proof and could even use the current waste as fuel and it's should be a no-brainer.

 

[mdclone]

Nuclear power is something that would have been a great idea to be building more of 20 years ago, but we're unlikely to be seeing any more of it anytime soon.

Nuclear is a massive capital investment, taking a decade+ to build and enough cost that for most companies it is putting a large amount (if not all) of their eggs in one basket, at a time where alternatives such as wind and solar, as well as energy storage technologies are getting cheaper and cheaper by the day (to the point it is highly likely battery storage for wind\solar will be more than viable by the time any nuclear project would complete). Very few investors are going to want to sink $10bil into a project that will take a decade or more to complete and by the time it gets up and running may not even be cost-competitive with the alternatives that exist when it is finished.

And in 20 years someone will make the same stupid argument. It's never too late to start and we as a society could make it much cheaper and quicker to develop nuclear power plants if we wanted. But the enviros will fight it tooth and nail no matter the facts.

 

[Sigmapolis]

@motorcy90

To be fair, a lot of those developers looking at the mid-2020s are assuming the PTC gets extended (again) or they are either playing into or assuming some "policy windfall" in the future, like a cap-and-trade or state renewable requirements.

You have to make business decisions based on political calculations, too.

 

[ArgentCy]

I am still trying to figure out the mass psychology of this.

Part of me thinks people simply do not understand what are the very basics to the economists, engineers, and scientists involved in these questions. Option A and Option B each have their strengths and weaknesses, and coming up with an optimal route requires a lot of thought, research, judgmental calls, and ultimately, a lot of compromise.

That process is exceedingly boring and does not have a clean narrative. It also lacks an "ending." It does not have a three act structure, like most of our entertainment products, and it does not have a clear winner and loser like watching a ball game. Unable to deal with that reality, people either (1.) filter it like that or (2.) have it filtered like that by the media providing them the relevant content, who need to do that for their own commercial interests to draw eyeballs.

When one consumes media, unless you are paying for it, you are the product, not the customer. It is no small wonder that news has become more like entertainment over time as content has become free, with simpler plots and more obvious "sides" for you to choose.

I also wonder if people kind of sense those hard decisions are there to make about many important issues and, instead of embracing the challenge, they recoil at it. People do not like making hard decisions that remind them of life's limitations, especially regarding issues they know deep down that they barely understand. We as as country are going to have to make some very hard choices about the next era of our foreign policy, energy industry, education, fiscal policy, retirement and income security, and healthcare in the next decade or two.

Very few of those choices will involve more free stuff without significant amounts of pain, even if that is what is being sold us right now. I am not buying.

Therefore, as a psychological self-defense mechanism against the complexity of the issues or the trade-offs involved, they just simply everything down to good-and-bad and use that as a crutch. It is not ignorance, but more willful ignorance to avoid the depth of the problem. You always delay a hard choice if you can, to maximize your utility in the short-term before making it and for the possibility that something more attractive for you might open up if you wait.

Amazing how the two parties have basically collapsed around the same thing -- a series of unrealistic and frankly fantastical promises, each from the perfect avatar of their collective id and cultural identity. One side offers a rich game show host from Queens, and the other side offers a broke bartender from Brooklyn. Not seeing much Eisenhower or Truman.

Careful, you are getting awfully close to the dangers of TL/DR.

 

[alarson]

And in 20 years someone will make the same stupid argument. It's never too late to start and we as a society could make it much cheaper and quicker to develop nuclear power plants if we wanted. But the enviros will fight it tooth and nail no matter the facts.

Except its not a stupid argument because its apparent right now.

I have nothing against nuclear per se, it just isnt happening in the US

 

[BCClone]

I've often thought about having our large old unused silo knocked down and offering that space for them to put one up. I think it would be cool to have it on the corner of my property.

Won’t. Too close to a residence

 

[isufbcurt]

Won’t. Too close to a residence

how far does it need to be from a residence?

 

[HFCS]

NOT A HOAX

 

[FOREVERTRUE]

I've often thought about having our large old unused silo knocked down and offering that space for them to put one up. I think it would be cool to have it on the corner of my property.

Hope that corner of your property is further than 300 meters away from your house. They can shed ice the size of a car and are basically a large trebuchet which we measured ice shed out to 300 meters (at that distance it is generally smaller say softball size ice chunks) on the 65 meter tall 1.5 MW GE turbines, and now they are taller with longer blades (this was 10 years ago).

 

[Sigmapolis]

Careful, you are getting awfully close to the dangers of TL/DR.

<500 words (461)

A board full of the college-educated being scared of what amounts to 2-3 paragraphs in an academic text is either pretty funny, scary, or doesn't say much about the educations that we collectively enjoyed from our beloved cardinal and gold university.

 

[BCClone]

how far does it need to be from a residence?

1000 or quarter mile type distance.

 

[motorcy90]

One item that I haven't seen discussed is the disturbance to the farmland, and the changes the wind structures, electrical lines, service roads, substations etc do to our soil.

our tower basses and gravel access roads take up less then half an acre for the most part. our park they kept most of the roads to the fence line as much as possible to take up even less usable space, the farmers use the roads more then we do to access the fields easily and park equipment on them all the time. and I will have to try to find it later but there was an article published some where that said yields in areas around/ under turbines had a small increase from other areas of the same field.

The sound would drive me crazy. Friends who live about 1 1/2 miles away always have a sound whooshing from them. Even at that distance.

we hear the trucks running up and down the county/state hwy that runs by our building more then the towers across the gravel road.

I wonder if it depends on the prevailing wind direction. I live about a mile from ours and cannot hear it from inside or outside of the house. Maybe it if it was pointed out to me, I might be able to hear it, but it's clearly not enough to bother me.

I do feel bad for the people living right around them on some level, though. I imagine the money is probably nice, as you'd have to give up portions of your land to have them built on, but for those of us that live close by instead of under them, it doesn't seem like much of a nuisance.

the couple that lives across the road seam to not mind having 4 all within a 1/4 mile of their house. but they do have 2 of those on their land so that might be making a difference as its guaranteed money pretty much.

I get this part of the equation too...but it's kind of a chicken or the egg issue. If you can't use standard energy sources to research or improve other techniques for generating energy then we'll never be able to advance. I would have to believe the "dream" is that we of course have to use traditional sources today to build the turbines. Then as these turbines come online then we are using less and less traditional sources as we slowly convert. Now I'm not sold that wind is THE answer but we can't decide that we won't try new techniques because we have to use oil for example today to get there.

yeah no one in the industry will say wind turbines are a perfect solve all solution to the worlds energy needs. but they are a step in the right direction of curbing our use of carbon loaded fuels.

Electricity can be “efficiently” transferred great distances via HVDC, HVAC, and uHVAC lines. Problem is the infrastructure isn’t there.

if the US would truly bite the bullet so to speak and spend the money on a smart grid across the US and do away with the regional power structure we currently have it would go a long way to solving a lot of the current issues. imagine being able to send power made in the Arizona desert across country to NYC. the way it's set up now we have the east coast grid, the mid west/central grid and the western grid. Florida is really the only state to have its own "smart grid" and thats because it's been rebuilt how many times now after a hurricane?

 

[ArgentCy]

in all honesty it could be the power company underestimated the wind conditions for the day and curtailed the farm to prevent over production. it happened a few times last month at my park where cipco/alliant said hey we don't need this production output currently, and remotely shutdown our towers overnight.

then I'm sure you also now what GE and MHI/Vestas have going for the offshore monsters 10-12MW/hr outputs. wish the offshore business would take off more in the US as I would love to work on those. the company I work for is pushing it's new 4-5MW tower and installed the first ones in the states over in ND not to long ago, I was over there for a week of training and wasn't lucky enough to get a chance to climb one. but did walk around the one they were still in the process of erecting and damn was it impressive.

the current PTC ends in 2024 with a decrease starting next year each year till then. and yeah SD and ND are both starting to wake up to the benefits of wind power over coal. but I don't think batteries are honestly the best overall solution but as another poster states SMRs backing up wind would be a good thing overall.

Those are some interesting designs. I've been invested in a company (AMSC) that would / does produce the superconducting magnets for these beasts. I think the technology is finally developing enough to put these into use. I can't believe that GE didn't buy them out at some point but then again they've had their heads so far up their... well never mind.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/g...ind-turbines-ge-si-vwdry-amsc-phg-2011-08-31/