Market for wind power picks up speed [CNBC]

[megatherium]

AUSTIN, Texas - It's just half a percent of total energy consumption in the U.S., but wind power is the fastest growing renewable energy source out there -- in terms of usage and capacity.

-edit-

More and more companies are, as wind prices have dropped by about 80 percent since the 1980's. With the average cost per kilowatt hour at about seven cents, wind is now economically competitive with fossil fuels.

Vic Abate, vice president of General Electric's Renewable Energy division, says technology is behind that price drop. (GE is the parent company of CNBC.)

“Ten years ago, the capacity factor for a wind turbine was about 20 percent,“ he said. “Today the wind turbines we are shipping are over 30 percent in capacity factors -- illustrating the efficiencies of the technology and controls advancements. There's been advancements in size, in scale of the wind turbines. For example, about 10 years ago, they were putting about half the power per turbine that they are putting out today. And the other element has been the efficiency.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12053296/

[JohnWxy]

1. Wind Power grew 38% in 2005. Would have been higher but wind turbine

manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand!


I especially noticed this in the quote you provided:

"There's been advancements in size, in scale of the wind turbines. For example, about 10 years ago, they were putting about half the power per turbine that they are putting out today. And the other element has been the efficiency.”

Doubled the power output of wind turbines in 10 years!

AND............... NO TOXIC WASTE!!!

[ladjf]

3. The "egg beater" style wind turbine also has lots of promise.

[ladjf]

2. That's great. But, there is a two year backlog of orders for

commercial sized wind generators. I don't understand why this is the case.

[phantom power]

4. There is only so much production capacity.

Even if we magically decided tomorrow to install several terawatts worth of wind turbines, I think it would take years to ramp up the production capacity required to actually build them. Although it's possible to imagine a major emergency factory re-tooling, similar to what went on after Pearl Harbor.

I notice that they're pretty large too, especially the newest models. Transporting them where you want them isn't as simple as calling FedEx :-)

[skids]

5. Yeah, major emergency factory retooling...

...wouldn't that be nice for all those unemployed steel plant workers and auto industry assembly-line jockeys.

Don't look to our business leaders to do it though. They're too busy trying to figure out how to squeeze more profits into CEO pockets.

[ladjf]

7. Germany has reported significant job additions in the

renewable energy industry that is offsetting losses in other industries. The U.S. is lagging behind. The fossil fuel and nuclear companies have always done as much as they could to discourage the use of any other fuels. George Carlin used to do a comedy routine saying that "The power companies hate solar energy because they can't put a meter on sun light." Lot of truth in that joke.

[ladjf]

6. Perhaps I'm a bit too impatient. It seems like the normal

market pressures of supply vs demand aren't kicking in soon enough. Anyway, it very encouraging to see that wind power is being accepted as a main stream method of producing electricity.

[phantom power]

8. Unfortunately, real-world markets aren't frictionless.

just because demand grows fast does not mean production can keep up with total fluidity.

In fact, that's one of the big gaping fallacies of the neo-cons who think that "market forces" can solve any problem. If, say, oil runs out, there is no guarantee whatsoever that some replacement form of energy will be available to seamlessly pick up the slack. The transition will have lots of friction, expressing itself in economic hardships for most people. A lowered standard of living. Jobs lost. Or worse.

[JohnWxy]

9. This requires some additional availability of skilled people but

IF GE and other manufacturers are running just one shift - you CAN operate with two shifts or even around the clock. One additional shift - doubles your capacity. Two additional shifts - TRIPLES your capacity. Something to think about.

IT's not going to take years to boost capacity. But this is where IF WE HAD LEADERSHIP AND COMMITMENT TO FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING in Washington, the Government could get involved. IF the administration recognized how critical the situation is they would realize we should be MOBILIZING the country (just like going to war) to try to fight global warming.

Government guaranteed loans (would lower interest cost and make more private sector money available to smaller operations), or even direct Government loans at lower interest rates would help out the smaller manufacturers (GE has about 60% of the market. They don't really need the help. But there are a number of smaller manufacturers who could be helped to expand more quickly with this sort of help (also this would help the smaller players compete with GE who dominates the market, domestically speaking anyway).