FirstEnergy to buy 250 megawatts of energy from W.Va. wind farms

[jpak]

http://www.wastenews.com/headlines2.html?id=1142531084
 
March 16 -- FirstEnergy Corp. has signed 20-year agreements to buy 250 megawatts of output from two wind power generation projects under development in West Virginia.

U.S. Wind Force LLC, a Wexford, Pa., renewable energy firm, is developing both projects with its joint venture partner, Padoma Wind Power LLC of La Jolla, Calif.

The projects include a 150-megawatt wind farm near Bayard, W.Va., called Mt. Storm, and the Liberty Gap wind farm, a 100-megawatt project near Franklin, W.Va. Both projects are expected to be operational by December 2007 and will generate 650,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

The two projects will more than double the 234 megawatts of installed wind power in the Mid-Atlantic region, said David McAnally, U.S. Wind Force CEO.

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[benburch]

1. BTW, the NIMBY crowd is opposing this.

Of course, they are being BACKED by Big Coal.

[greenman3610]

2. NPR story about small town benefits from wind power

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5260426

[NNadir]

3. Generally energy is sold in units of power times time.

A typical unit would be the kilowatt-hour.

Here is the explanation: A watt is a joule per second. A joule is defined as the unit of energy required to exert a force of one newton for a distance of one meter. In order to convert a unit of power into energy, it is necessary to multiply units of power by units of time, that is the time that the power is actually being produced. A 250 MW wind farm, for instance, may produce 250 MW for a fraction of a month, exactly when the wind is just right and at the right speed.

Most people know that if they turn all the lights, toaster ovens, microwaves, electric ovens, etc on for 10 minutes, so that their power demand is ten times as high as normal, and then shut them off and run nothing for the rest of the month, the electric company will not bill them ten times as much, even though their power consumption was instantaneously very high.

This is why electric bills say kilowatt-hours and not kilowatts.

I very much doubt that First Energy is buying "watts." It is an energy company. Therefore it is buying energy.

The actual energy involved is, in fact, given in the article. The reporter writes:

Both projects are expected to be operational by December 2007 and will generate 650,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

Now to find the average power we can simply calculate. First we multiply by 1,000,000 for the "mega" and then we multiply by 3600, the number of seconds in an hour. This gives the energy output expected for the wind farm in joules. The answer is 2.3 X 10¹⁵ Joules. Now we divide by the number of seconds in a year, 31,557,600, and we find the average power for the plant, which is 74,000,000 watts or 74 MW.

Dividing by the peak capacity, given misleadingly as 250 Mega"watts," which is presumably the power generated when the wind is blowing at just the right speed, we see the capacity load of the wind farm. It is 74/250. It is about 30%.

Thus if the plant produces as expected, it will be the equivalent of a 75 watt power plant. This certainly isn't going to drive the coal industry in West Virginia out of business, especially the times of peak demand, hot sunny days needing lots of air conditioning, are precisely the moments that the wind is not blowing. A good breeze reduces the demand for air conditioning generally.

[jpak]

4. "the equivalent of a 75 watt power plant" - LOL

That would only run 6 compact fluorescent light bulbs.

You're right, wind power sucks.

:rofl:

[NNadir]

5. The typo is obvious. The plant is still not a 250 Megawatt plant.

It is a 74 Megawatt plant.

To give an idea of the scale of this magical adventure, I note that it doubles the Northeast capacity, and still does not put out even the equivalent of a third of a normal coal plant.

If I were trying to represent this capacity as a solution to global climate change, I would focus on the typo too, in order to distract attention from the reality - which, by the way, should be clear from the calculation (assuming one understands arithmetics) showing exactly how insignificant this capacity is.

The John Ames coal fired plant in West Virginia, produces 1300 MWe, and does so continuously, not at the whim of the weather. Thus the average power of the plant 74 Megawatts, and not 250 Mega"watts," is less than 5% of the coal plant, and, to boot, is less reliable.

http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/lotl/v25/v25f.html

This is why I believe that people who are imagining that wind power - or any other form of renewable energy - is in a position to arrest global climate change are deluding themselves and attempting to delude everyone else, albeit not very successfully.

Wind power is the second most reliable form of renewable energy after hydroelectric power, but as I have noted elsewhere, the entire capacity of the wind energy in the United States is not equal to the John Ames coal fired plant - which, in my opinion, should be shut down and replaced by a real alternative.

[jpak]

6. LOL!!! Freudian slip????

Last time I looked, global installed wind capacity was >59 GW and growing at >11 GW per year....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=44213

...and will triple to >210 GW by 2014 - the earliest date BTW that ChimpCo's taxpayer-giveaway 1 GW nucular plant could come on line.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=45182

So you're right again - wind power and other renewables can NEVER fight that nasty old global warming thang....

:rofl:

but, *sigh* , you are wrong (again) regarding the claim "the entire capacity of the wind energy in the United States is not equal to the John Ames coal fired plant"

Current US wind capacity is 9149 "mystical" MW which is equal to 2744 "physicist" MW...so sorry.

:rofl:

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Assuming NNadir means the John Amos plant in WV...

...He's right. That's listed as 2,932 Mw. And you'd better not ask about the 4Gw Parish plant in TX...

Google is your friend, remember? :D

[NNadir]

9. Last I looked, power was still not energy. The energy figures for wind

are available as I indicated in a thread showing that a single new nuclear reactor in Japan that started this week, almost exceeds the wind capacity of the entire United States.

Of course, the confused notion that wind energy is sufficient to address global climate change is wholly dependent on the confusion between power and energy, and so I will reproduce the calculations here.

First, once more the link for the total production of energy from wind power in the United States:

http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/RenewableAlternativeEnergy/RenewableAlternativeEnergyStatistics/tabid/192/Default.aspx

The figure here is not a misrepresentation based on peak power that persists for some fraction of the time. The unit is energy, in this case, billion kilowatt-hours. I have pointed out many times that a billion kilowatt-hours is 3.6 X 10¹⁵J or 0.0036 exajoules. I can only assume that the ignorance surrounding this fact of physics results either from deliberation or from complete confusion derived from fantasy, but in any case, the cause of this confusion is of no import.

The fact remains that the total energy output of wind in the United States represented in this link is 14 billion kilowatt-hours or 0.05 exajoules. This is roughly the equivalent of a single power plant producing 1300MW, a plant that would produce 0.04 exajoules. One obtains this figure by multiplying 1,300,000,000 watts by 31,556,700 seconds in a year (recognizing that fossil fueled plants can operate at 100% of rated capacity on demand). There's nothing in it but arithmetic.

The fact that each installation of 74 MWe of wind power requires a link from fans on the internet, that it must be represented as its peak power and not its average power, and that capacity that is a fraction of what a normal fossil fueled plant provides, demonstrates completely and fully that the renewable energy industry is not prepared to address global climate change.

For all the hoopla, even wind energy, the best of the non-hydro renewable energy sources, cannot even match nationwide the energy demand of a single fossil fueled power plant.

It is relatively easy, by demonstration, to show that the renewable energy industry at best can be a minor supplement to nuclear power if we are to survive global climate change. Afterall, everybody loves renewable energy, and still the production is abysmally poor.

QED. Again.

[benburch]

7. You need to re-examine this siting.

Those locales have very constant winds. Not a tiny fraction of the time.

And as I have read other stories about this, 250 MW was taken to be the output under AVERAGE conditions.

A windmill in my back yard might indeed produce usable output only 35-40% of the time. But nobody wants to site a wind farm in my back yard...

[NNadir]

10. The article gives the expected energy for this wind farm.

It is 650,000 megawatt-hours or 2.3 petajoules. Averaged for the entire year, 31.557 million seconds, the power output averages 74 megawatts. The article makes no reference to whether the conditions here are better or worse than anywhere else, but I assume that the designers of the plant have analyzed the weather in their area in coming up with this figure.

The plant is tiny. Although it will do something to address global climate change, it would be a mistake to represent that it will do anywhere near enough.