Bishop Hill Wind turbines: worse than we thought
Aug 3, 2015 Energy: wind Readers may recall the little ding-dong between Gordon Hughes and David Mackay over the rate of decline in performance of wind turbines as they age. Hughes thought that this happened much faster than Mackay.
Mackay has been looking at the subject again today, analysing how newer windfarms have performed against older ones. His intention was to look at how technological improvements have shown up in the load factors of the turbines, but it's possible that he has inadvertently shown that Hughes was right.
The reason for this is that the rate of improvement in load factor is no greater than would be expected from the fact that the turbines are newer. So you can draw one of two conclusions:
- load factors have not been enhanced by technological improvements
- the rate of performance decline is greater than Mackay had thought.
Either way, wind turbines look just a bit more like a dead end than they did yesterday.
Reader Comments (43)
I don't follow your logic for assuming decline is more significant than assumed. Decline and technological improvement work together on the graph, not in opposition. Agreed, this shows there has not been any clear ROI on the technology front...
In the comments on the Gordon Hughes and David Mackay post Mailman wrote:-
I might be being a tad cynical, but I would predict that if there is a response it will be along these lines.
Seeking generated output statistics for the bottom dweller on McKay's chart, the 2B Gwynt y Mor Liverpool Bay installation, I found none on the website ("Homes equivalent capacity 400,000 homes1...with no reference)
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/1252456/rwe-innogy/sites/wind-offshore/in-operation/gwynt-y-mr/tech-and-spec/
The "Decommissioning Strategy" document has amongst many interesting details that the design life of the installation is 20-23 years.
When Greens and other deluded political fools quote the capacity of a windfarm, they quote its maximum output, never its actual average output.
Should the quoted maximum output now be discounted year by year, to reflect reality? Or do the Blob have to keep insisting on unattainable figures, as built, keep performance decline secret, and fail to disclose shorter than quoted economic life cycle costings, all to sustain Green renewable lies?
Green lies are renewable, while public confidence is running out.
"His intention was to look at how technological improvements have shown up in the load factors of the turbines, but it's possible that he has inadvertently shown that Hughes was right."
Or that "technological improvements" was a lie.
He's taking the MacKay...:o)
Sean
You need to read Mackay's post. If turbine A was commissioned a year before turbine B Mackay would expect it to perform 1.6% worse today due to ageing. He might also expect the difference to be even more because turbine B should have tech improvements. Let's say that Mackay expects tech improvements at 0.5% per annum, so he would expect a difference of 2.1%. In fact the difference is only 1.6%. Is that because the ageing rate is faster than 1.6% per annum, as Hughes thinks, but offset by the tech improvements? Or is the 1.6% ageing rate correct, but there have been no tech improvements.
Technological improvements presumably means a direct drive.
"Experts from Technical University of Denmark estimate that a geared generator with permanent magnets may use 25 kg/MW of the rare earth element Neodymium, while a gearless may use 250 kg/MW".
Excellent work MacKay. They don't need subsidies then, do they ?
"Is that because the ageing rate is faster than 1.6% per annum, as Hughes thinks, but offset by the tech improvements? Or is the 1.6% ageing rate correct, but there have been no tech improvements."
Or could it also be that the technological improvement is, say, greater than expected at 1.6% but that there is no aging effect? In fact there could be any number of different solutions to this equation, couldn't there?
(I haven't read the paper, so I may have missed something.)
I've posted the following comment:
Hang on. There's a third factor here - the Law of Diminishing Returns.
A) Performance declines with age.
B) Performance is improved with new technology.
But...
C) Performance will always initially be worse for new turbines as the best lace to put them already have a turbine there.
So finding no improvements due to technology could mean that A is bigger than assumed or it could mean that C is a greater factor.
It could mean that the number of good places for wind turbines is rapidly running out.
(Phillip Bratby made the same point while I was typing. Harrumph)
O/T Last segment on Channel Four News studio debate on Obama,s Clean Energy Plan.
From Washington Nicholas Loris from The Heritage Foundation in the Studio Liz Hutchins from Friends of the Earth.
The Heritage Foundation point Obama,s plan switching from cheap coal to Expensive Renewables will obviously shift the Burden onto Low Income America and miniscule Emission Reduction.
Catch all phrase "lot of Economic Pain for very little Environmental Gain".
Obviously Ms Hutchins response "why are we even discussing this with someone like the Heritage Foundation anyway."
Friends of the Earth when they cant win the debate shut down the Debate and they wonder why we call them Eco Fascist.So much for free speech and Democracy.
PS she did make a departing comment that The Heritage Foundation is funded by the Fossil Fuel Industry and therefore has a vested interest .Where as Friends of the Earth has a Vested interest in promoting Climate Change Alarm whether it exist or not.
There's too many mistakes in the air here. For a start, Gordon Hughes' main interest was onshore wind turbines. He had little to say about offshore and if I recall correctly said he had too little data to make a judgement.
MacKay is looking at offshore windfarms. There aren't many of them but they are large. There's not that much data, but when I ride by on the train, Gwynt y Mor does seem to have a lot of duffers.
Some observers are saying that 2015 is proving to be a good year for windmills. Well thanks be to God! Knew we'd get a winner one day. Albeit, I haven't checked the figures for 2014, nor 2015 to date. Given the inspiration of Amber Rudd (we need to make her look offshore as well!) I see little point - job done I think.
But I see little room for the optimism that McKay has for technological improvements. What does he think is going to happen? Someone discovers a whole area of aerofoil design that NACA and others missed in the 1930s? After years of research someone designs an aerofoil pitch control mechanism that's low maintenance? After 100 years of electrical generator research the problem of high pole pair count on slow revolving machines is solved.?
The only hope they've got is that the wind shear predictions they made for their higher windmill placement will bring home the money. But then, unfortunately, the ratio of windspeeds across the huge rotors of these offshore windmills might just prove too much for the hub bearings . . .
And just in passing, Gwynt y Mor will allow the Welsh Assembly to claim that their TAN8 objective of 7 TWh per annum annual renewable generation by 2020 (45 % per capita higher than the UK target) has already been met, so we can pack up our renewables in our old kit bags and go home until 2020, can't we? I mean, no one, even Professor David McKay, would dream of breaking the Levy Control Framework cap would they
. . ........................................................... oh whoops, we already have.
So folks, the Levy cap was £7.6 bn, it's set to get to £9.6 bn (thanks in part to the majestic Gwynt y Mor), and given 24 million households in the UK, that'll be a nice round £400 per annum for the ROCs levy.
Frankly, any decline in output will be welcome as a relief from this regressive tax and reduction in payment to the wind (and solar) spivs.
"Experts from Technical University of Denmark estimate.."
Don't they know? There must be plenty of data on geared and ungeared generators from Vestas.
@ Capell
Thanks for that info on the Levy Control Framework. I was unaware of it (or must have missed it).
22nd July 2015:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/levy-control-framework-cost-controls
And for extra excitement, that written statement also includes info on "Changes to grandfathering provisions for biomass ...."
Aug 3, 2015 at 8:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterCapell
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I have been pointing out for years that wind turbines employ very old technology that has been tried and tested for upwards of 100 years. There are no new radical solutions to come, and there can never be the economy of scale that was seen with the valve being replaced by the transistor being replaced by the integrated chip. These turbines have to be stand alone structures, widely spaced not to cause wind shadowing to other nearby turbines.
The problem for offshore is the environmental conditions which is very ravishing on machinery as anyone involved in shipping will attest. Maintenance will be extremely difficult as anyone involved in the off-shore industry will also attest. It will be very difficult to carry out planed maintenance due to changing weather conditions, high wind and swell which will make working on these structures horribly dangerous. When these turbines breakdown, they will not be cost effective to repair.
The fact is that sea air (with its high salt content0 is extremely abrasive such that the leading edges of these turbine blades will quickly wear. The annual drop off in performance will be far more noticeable for off-shore compared to that seen with on shore. There is nothing that can be done about this; the blades are being continually shot blasted by high velocity winds.
Off-shore windfarms will, within less than 10 years, be seen to be an unmitigated disaster. The government has really well and truly been sold a pup with this one.
Given that windfarms (because of the need for conventionally powered backup generation) do not result in the reduction of any meaningful CO2 emissions, it is difficult to understand the raison d'etre for there existence (other than to make money for the subsidy farmers).
Going forward there are other fundamental issues:-
Renewable Energy May Be Doomed To Be Unprofitable Forever
I may have this backasswards but, if the observed performance gap in the Bish's example is less than expected then either:
The older turbine's decay is LESS than 1.6% per annum, not more as quoted
or:
The newer unit shows no improvement, as stated.
Otherwise the gap would have to be greater since: Gap = Decay + Improvement.
If I am missing something, could someone please put me straight?
Windmill load factors have nothing to do with innovation and/or technical advances, they are purely determined by wind statistics. Very curious that someone like Mackay does not know this.
During the 1940's, the very first laminar-flow airfoils were implemented, using an empiricaly derived profile on the North American Mustang, and a rigorously derived profile on the Supermarine Spiteful and Attacker.
It was very quickly found that the airfoil performance could be significantly compromised by a number of factors. In particular, the distortion and rippling of the airfoil skin under extreme flight loads, and even the build-up of flies deposited on the leading edges on take-off could be sufficient to disrupt the performance.
Modern composite wind-turbine blades now permit a very much higher standard of initial manufacturing accuracy, while the original problems of profile distortion under load have been largely eliminated. But the effect of salt build-up and erosion still remains, and can rapidly compromise the intended high-efficiency characteristics. Until the airfoil profile can be accurately maintained throughout the life of the wind-turbine, there will be inevitably be significant deterioration in performance, a lesson first learned over 70 years ago.
Couldn't they mount wind turbines on top of power station cooling towers? It would save on connecting to the grid, they would have the added benefit of height, and when the wind was not blowing, by tilting the rotors to horizontal, they could generate from the rising water vapour.
You would think that someone like David Mackay who is actually able to run the numbers would have cottoned on to the fact that Turbines will never be substantially better than they are now; that they will never have an EROI sufficiently high to take a place in a modern society; that they are constrained by the low power density of moving air; that their variable output makes them unsuitable for grid applications without storage; that non hydro grid sized storage is a 100 years to infinity away..At least five generations of turbine into the future; that turbines macerate the protected species of birds and bats. In short that they are utterly pointless for anything other than off grid local use. How can someone who claims to be a scientist be so completely blind to the bleeding obvious. Would he like to come on here and explain that to us?
"that their variable output makes them unsuitable for grid applications without storage" - Ivor Ward
And storage would require massive expansion of wind turbines to have something to store.
Aug 3, 2015 at 9:58 PM | Green Sand
So, basically, in some conditions, German windmills, constructed at huge expense, use free wind to produce large quantities of valueless electricity!
Kind of ironic.
Ivor Ward, anyone would have thought that wind mill enthusiasts were in the pay of Big Green Renewable Liars
Gamecock, to build bigger windmills, with even bigger batteries, will end up with struggles to control Rare Earth Metals. As they are mined in China, at least environmentalists won't be able to interfere with the ensuing destruction.
No doubt, Golf Charlie. But don't miss my point: even if amazing batteries were available today, there is nothing to store. "Renewables" would have to be vastly expanded to have something to store.
Then the Big Problem hits. "Renewables" get a free ride on conventional production for backup. Should "renewables" approach grid level production, as would be required if batteries come into play, conventional production becomes uneconomical and disappears. Vast "renewables" with battery storage guarantees blackouts. And businesses move somewhere else. And people buy personal generators. Batteries are not a solution, they are a step towards bigger problems.
Gamecock, Renewable Lies get recycled after every failure. Unfortunately, after recycling, they are still the same Renewable Lies, but by a bit of Green magic, much bigger.
"Couldn't they mount wind turbines on top of power station cooling towers? It would save on connecting to the grid, they would have the added benefit of height, and when the wind was not blowing, by tilting the rotors to horizontal, they could generate from the rising water vapour"
Certainly an idea worth pursuing, GC, but may I humbly submit a tentative design improvement that, given Scotlands' unique eco-environment, will increase the Greenability ROI to an extent that subsidies from the taxpayer will no longer be necessary and, with no additional expenditure, boost both income from agriculture and tourism to boot!
Cunningly designed pulleys, belts and 'planet and sun' gearing that convert rotary motion to reciprocating motion could be connected to your proposed cooling-tower, wind-turbine devices that suck our indigenous insects, attracted by the irrestible lure of dephlogistaced carbon, into fiery pits that, fed by the calorific energies of their carcases, can be used to produce low-cost steam to energise voltaic generators and guarantee that frog's legs in the UK will keep twitching 24x7x365.25 (and without penury!).
Given the sustainable and massive biomass potential from the humble 'midge scotius' alone, not to mention any other of our numerous flying 'wee beasties', we could immediately negate the need to cut down and import North American timber and thus preserve our store of natural carbon sinks without resorting to futuristic fantasies such as CCS!
Before I depart from the subject of biomass energy sources, let me insert an observation that there are species, further up the food-chain and attracted to insects, such as small birds and bats that will inevitably be harvested alongside the main crop. Albeit smaller in number, their vastly greater individual, relative biochemical latent energy converted by cremation can only increase the monetary value of this technological innovation and, without any additional investment - win, win, I believe, is the common way to express this.
And it's not just about one rung up the ladder of Darwin. As the wit of Jonathan Swift begat;
"So nat'ralists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em.
And so proceeds Ad infinitum."
Now as you've no doubt deduced, GC, I'm no JS but forgive me for internally chortling about an equally witty, although as yet unwritten piece of mine that involves Robins and Raptors that, I can assure you, will invoke even more hilarity than that piece of doggerel!
The use of insecticides in agriculture would be slashed, the humble bee, with the spectre of its extinction eradicated, would multiply and further contribute to the solar collection efficacy of our flora. Tourists, freed from the threat of vampiristic sadism by Culicoides impunctatus and unencumbered by 'Carbon Guilt', would flock to Caledonia whether by plane, train, automobile or, perhaps less so, by bicycle.
Apart from some possible confusion by exponents of the photographic arts, employed by institutions such as the BBC or the Manchester Guardian, whom already baffled by the difference between a photshopped image and reality, may further confuse the swarms of insects, bats and avian predators above cooling towers as deadly clouds of pollution with those numerous occasions upon which they portrayed, using backlit 'film noir' techniques of the 1940s, vapours of dihydrogen monoxide condensate as dark clouds of dirt, doom and death.
Given that the subject of their happy snapping was steam coming out of a cooling tower - the same thing, albeit on an industrial scale as the same stuff that 'belched' and 'spewed' out of their kettle the morning after they'd cashed their cheque from their employers which explains the massive hangover that necessitated that life-saving cup of coffee that they gulped down shortly afterwards, it's hardly a testament to the efforts of our 'world-beating' educational system.
To conflate, ignorant at best and inflammatory at worst, the subject water vapour, however artistically depicted, with invisible carbon dioxide and then heap further indignity upon an already flagrant misdirection by further trickery to soot is admirably dishonest. I'd sort of forgiven them if they'd played a few bars of Pink Floyd's tribute 'Shine on your crazy Diamond' but they didn't. But, let bygones be bygones - one (wo)man, one vote. Anyone whose inner self can be so influenced by illogic dressed up as a lamb despite its sharp teeth can be persuaded that some non-white clouds are really fluffy and non non-white. Frequent repetitions of 'sustainable, 'social justice and fairness' and 'equality' followed up with a blitzkrieg of social-media 'likes' will get them onside.
I have carefully weighed up the evidence for and against the mechanisms that were first suggested by your good self and them things what I have wrote to make them much, much better and I can say, quite robustly, unargueably and modestly pontificate that 'The science is settled, there are no downsides and, for once, the law of unintended consequences has met its match'
Yours Humbly,
RoyFOMR
RoyFOMR Where is Heath Robinson when you need him, to illustrate your cunning wheeze?
We need to harvest the energy of bees by creating a sort of hamster wheel with rows of bees on each slat, continuously fed with nectar so they can all flap wings in the same direction. Every hour let them have a rest.
There, solved it; call it Beepower. One turbine for a single LED in each peasant hovel to allow the 10 million residual UK population to read in the long, cold dark nights. Did someone say 'heating'? Can't be any of that; we'll use the same forced evolution that Lysenko introduced to make the population hard enough to survive in the new LIA.
Given that windfarms (because of the need for conventionally powered backup generation) do not result in the reduction of any meaningful CO2 emissions, it is difficult to understand the raison d'etre for there existence (other than to make money for the subsidy farmers).
Raison d'etre?
How about this horrible CAGW problem was "identified" and leapt upon by our dear Government, various "Focus Groups", the media & assorted hangers-on clamoured out for a "Solution". Governments always have to be seen to be "Doing Something" (When was the last one elected under the banner of "We're not going to pass any new laws, because everything is Hunckey Dorey?), since the "Focus Groups" etc have identified that nuclear power is a horrific no-no (Hiroshima, Chernobyl & Fukushima), then wind's the only way to go to (plus letting us put solar panels on our rooftops)
Had windmills been any good we would never had an industrial revolution...
The Danish Data shows declining operating life span as they as they increase in size. It also shows decreasing output as they age and increase in size . But from analyzing the data on the screen If you draw a trend line from 1977 to 2014 it is negative . In 1977 the were installing 20 kilowatt machines in 2014 they were installing 3.6 megawatt machines. As they get bigger the average life decreases. The issue for Ireland and the UK is that we are installing larger wind turbines than the Danes. Therefore performance drop off could be faster. In 2013 the average Danish wind turbine size was less than 900 kilowatts The confusion between aging output decline is artificial as the increased maintenance is probably caused by having to replace bearings, which in greater than 2 megawatt machines, can develop roller contact fatigue and White Etched Areas, WEA, in as little as 2 years even though the design spec. is for 20 year life span. Siemens 3 megawatt DD bearings are being replaced after 2 to 3 years. Then you have to start looking at wind farm layout wind shear and wind wake significantly reduces wind turbine life if they are too close together. A Johns Hopkins, University Louvain Study says 300 feet hub diameter wind should be 15 times the hub diameter apart. BNM Mount Lucas are 4.9 times hub diameter apart. At 3 times hub diameter in certain wind conditions wind turbine should be turned as the wind wake and wind shear could damage the blades. So it is a combination of a lot of factors. BNM say 500 meters is the industry standard separation distance in Ireland. Most other layouts outside Ireland use 7 to 8 times hub diameter. BNM are incompetent and clueless in the area of wind farm development. I think they are being forced into this by The DCENR who are panicking because of the low rate of increase in market penetration of wind. Having to increase wind turbine separation to what the Johns Hopkins/ Catholic University Louvain study indicates would cause tremendous difficulties in site development . Even if they used the 8 times hub diameter they would have pretty sizable difficulties. They install the capacity too close together and the wind turbines break up any way. It is mad
RoyFOMR, thank you for the technical update with bio-diversity/engineering developments.
Our combined innovations have to be worth £10m per year in non refundable grants, and even if they are proved to be high flying turkeys from Day 1, based on past performance, funding could be strung out for at least 20 years, boosted by corrupted political support (which may require about 15% commission for "expenses")
Wind power does not benefit from economies of scale.
Large wind power is dozens to hundreds of separate generators generating in an uncoordinated fashion, depending entirely no the vagaries of wind.
The only coordination possible is the financial one of concentrating subsidies and mandatory high prices for the intermittent unreliable product they make- when the wind blows.
RoyFOMR and GolfCharlie - re siting of wind turbines..
I've always maintained that one should be sited on the Houses of Parliament - because all that hot air which is generated within would have it spinning like a good 'un....
sherlock1, if wind turbines were sited on the Houses of Parliament, Hyde Park, Hampstead Heath etc, it would give Townies the opportunity to make their own evaluations of how unobtrusive they are, especially when they are not doing anything useful.
Why do townies not campaign for wind turbines in town centre bits of parkland? Townies are experts in telling country bumpkins how to manage the countryside, or so they keep telling everybody.
The maximum amount of energy you are extract from the wind is defined by Betz Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law
According to Betz's law, no turbine can capture more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy in wind. The factor 16/27 (0.593) is known as Betz's coefficient. Practical utility-scale wind turbines achieve at peak 75% to 80% of the Betz limit.[2][3]
The Betz limit places an upper bound on the annual energy that can be extracted at a site. Even if a hypothetical wind blew consistently for a full year, no more than the Betz limit of the energy contained in that year's wind could be extracted. In practice, the annual capacity factor of a wind site varies around 25% to 60% of the energy that could be generated with constant wind, limiting the energy that can possibly be obtained even further to typically a range of 14.8% to 35% respectively.
So why all the subsidy when the subsidy will never improve efficiency as based on the law of diminishing returns there is not much more to squeeze out.
Sailing ships died out as a commercial method of moving goods very quickly after steam arrived for a very good reason which seems to have passed our lords and masters by.
BoFA, Betz did not have to cope with the Financial Laws and the cost of diminishing subsidies. Taxpayer funded subsidies are the Green Blob solution to everything, on the basis that the Green Blob never pays, only profits.
One question I have never seen answered of addressed by research is:
There have been several years/summers now when the poor weather has been blamed on the gulf steam sea and air currents drifting south. Same this year.
Pcar, as the Gulf Stream can not be taxed, the Green Blob have never pursued its devious nature.
Not fantastically scientific, I know. But a couple of days ago I travelled to the Midlands on the East Coast mainline. During the journey I spotted 25 wind turbines, many of those in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire were rather large.
It was a tolerably breezy day and the majority of the machines were spinning. Five of the twenty five were stopped. One or two looked to be going slowly backwards others just stationary. If that's any indication of the health of the fleet, 20% of it is non-functioning at any one time.