Wind farms can provide a surplus of reliable clean energy to society, Stanford study finds

Today's wind industry, even with the necessary batteries and other grid-scale storage, is energetically sustainable, Stanford scientists say.

BY MARK SHWARTZ

Dennis Schroeder/NREL

A big challenge for utilities is finding new ways to store surplus wind energy and deliver it on demand. It takes lots of energy to build wind turbines and batteries for the electric grid. But Stanford scientists have found that the global wind industry produces enough electricity to easily afford the energetic cost of building grid-scale storage.

The worldwide demand for solar and wind power continues to skyrocket. Since 2009, global solar photovoltaic installations have increased about 40 percent a year on average, and the installed capacity of wind turbines has doubled.

The dramatic growth of the wind and solar industries has led utilities to begin testing large-scale technologies capable of storing surplus clean electricity and delivering it on demand when sunlight and wind are in short supply.

Now a team of Stanford researchers has looked at the "energetic cost" of manufacturing batteries and other storage technologies for the electrical grid. At issue is whether renewable energy supplies, such as wind power and solar photovoltaics, produce enough energy to fuel both their own growth and the growth of the necessary energy storage industry.

"Whenever you build a new technology, you have to invest a large amount of energy up front," saidMichael Dale, a research associate at Stanford. "Studies show that wind turbines and solar photovoltaic installations now produce more energy than they consume. The question is, how much additional grid-scale storage can the wind and solar industries afford and still remain net energy providers to the electrical grid?"

Writing in the March 19 online edition of the journal Energy & Environmental Science, Dale and his Stanford colleagues found that, from an energetic perspective, the wind industry can easily afford lots of storage, enough to provide more than three days of uninterrupted power. However, the study also revealed that the solar industry can afford only about 24 hours of energy storage. That’s because it takes more energy to manufacture solar panels than wind turbines.

"We looked at the additional burden that would be placed on the solar and wind industries by concurrently building out batteries and other storage technologies," said Dale, the lead author of the study. "Our analysis shows that today’s wind industry, even with a large amount of grid-scale storage, is energetically sustainable. We found that the solar industry can also achieve sustainable storage capacity by reducing the amount of energy that goes into making solar photovoltaics."

Reducing energy inputs to battery manufacturing is also needed, he said.

Favorable winds

Over the years, consumers have learned to expect electricity on demand from power plants that run on coal, natural gas or oil. But these fossil fuels, which provide reliable, around-the-clock energy, also emit megatons of greenhouse gas that contribute to global warming.

Wind and solar farms provide emissions-free energy, but only generate electricity when the wind blows or the sun shines. Surplus energy can be stored for later use, but today’s electrical grid has little storage capacity, so other measures are used to balance electricity supply and demand.

In the study, the Stanford team considered a variety of storage technologies for the grid, including batteries and geologic systems, such as pumped hydroelectric storage. For the wind industry, the findings were very favorable.

"Wind technologies generate far more energy than they consume," Dale said. "Our study showed that wind actually produces enough surplus electricity to support up to 72 hours of either battery or geologic storage. This suggests that the industry could deploy enough storage to cope with three-day lulls in wind, common to many weather systems, and still provide net electricity to society."

The results were especially good for onshore wind turbines. "We found that onshore wind backed by three days of geologic storage can support annual growth rates of 100 percent – in other words, double in size each year – and still maintain an energy surplus," he said.

"These results are very encouraging," said study co-author Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering and director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford. "They show that you could create a sustainable energy system that grows and maintains itself by combining wind and storage together. This depends on the growth rate of the industry, because the faster you grow, the more energy you need to build new turbines and batteries."

Solar industry

For the solar industry, the Stanford team found that more work is needed to make grid-scale storage energetically sustainable. The study revealed that some solar technologies, such as single-crystal silicon cells, are growing so fast that they are net energy sinks – that is, they consume more power than they give back to the electrical grid. From an energetic standpoint, these industries "cannot support any level of storage," the study concluded.

"Our analysis showed that, from an energetic perspective, most photovoltaic technologies can only afford up to 24 hours of storage with an equal mix of battery and pumped hydropower," Dale said. "This suggests that solar photovoltaic systems could be deployed with enough storage to supply electricity at night, and the industry could still operate at a net energy surplus."

One advantage of wind over solar power is that it has an enormous energy return on investment, Benson explained. "Within a few months, a wind turbine generates enough electricity to pay back all of the energy it took to build it," she said. "But some photovoltaics have an energy payback time of almost two years. To sustainably support grid-scale storage will require continued reductions in the amount of fossil fuel used to manufacture photovoltaic cells."

Other costs

The Stanford team’s primary focus was on the energetic cost of deploying storage on wind and solar farms. The researchers did not calculate how much energy would be required to build and replace grid-scale batteries every few years, nor did they consider the financial cost of building and installing large storage systems on the grid.

IEA blows away Abbott myths about solar and wind energy

By Giles Parkinson on 4 March 2014

One of the most depressing discussions I have ever had as editor of RenewEconomy was with a policy advisor for a state Coalition government. He started off by giving me a lecture about how his minister only acted on “evidence based information”, and then proceeded to quote some of the more outrageous nonsense published in the Murdoch media and some extremely marginal web-sites.

Perhaps, then, this person and all the other advisors who direct (or distort) energy policy at state and federal level with the conservative administrations should sit down and absorb the latest report by the International Energy Agency on the integration of wind and solar energy. It might reduce the ignorance and misinformation that is having a profound impact on renewable policy in Australia.

The IEA is a useful reference point. It is a highly conservative organization that was created after the 1970s gas crisis to ensure the continuation of energy supply. Energy security is its fundamental raison d’etre. And although some people, as we reported yesterday, criticise it for being way too conservative on solar PV costs, for instance, its research into renewables and systems integration debunks a lot of myths seemingly invented by Abbott’s acolytes and perpetuated by the politicians themselves.

The first myth, of course, is around the cost of renewables. As any number of studies have shown, Australia’s renewable energy target has added just 3 per cent to electricity bills, and has probably helped reduce them by that amount by helping push wholesale electricity prices down to record lows. And as the IEA notes, the levellised cost of electricity of wind power and solar PV is “close to even below the LCOE of fossil or nuclear options.

But that is not what the latest IEA report is about. It’s about the integration of solar and wind – what it calls variable renewable energy, or VRE – into new and existing grids. And it serves to completely debunk some of the other nonsense about renewables needing “back-up” fossil fuels, and adding huge costs to infrastructure.

The IEA could not be any clearer: “No additional dispatchable capacity ever needs to be built because VRE is in the system. On the contrary, to the extent of the capacity credit of VRE, its addition to the system reduces the need for other capacity.”

As the IEA also notes, since the early days of electrification in the late 19th century, variability and uncertainty have been steady companions of power systems. Indeed, the largest source of uncertainty comes from the failure of plants or other system components, which can cause abrupt and unexpected variations in supply. As  Australia’s Energy Market Operator found out in the latest heatwaves, when large coal and gas fired generators suddenly stopped generating.

And, the IEA further notes, there are very few grid-related costs to absorb even high shares of wind and solar.

It points to a European Wind Integration Study, that found wind penetration levels of 10 per cent would require less than $1/MWh to grid costs, and penetration levels of 13 per cent would require around $5.40/MWh. A study in Ireland, an isolated grid, suggested that the grid costs of wind power penetrations ranging from 16 per cent to 59 per cent ranged from just $2.20/MWh to $9.70/MWh.

Solar panel photo from Shutterstock

The PV Parity Project recently assessed grid costs associated with integrating 480 gigawatts (yes, gigawatts, or 480,000MW) of solar PV by 2030 into the European grid, found modest transmission grid costs of up to $4.00/MWh by 2030. Reinforcing distribution networks to accommodate solar PV would cost about $13/MWh by 2030.

The additional costs for accommodating small‐scale solar photovoltaic (PV) generation on the distribution level are as low as $1/MWh for a PV system size featuring 2.5 kilowatt per household – if the grid is planned properly from the onset.

More importantly, there are system benefits that might outweight the cost of generation of wind and solar and so lower the overall cost of the grid. This is borne out in reduced need for peak generation – as Australia found out in its recent heatwaves – and by lowering the overall wholesale electricity cost – as all Australian generators have found out in recent years.

As we mentioned in our first report on the IEA study, wind and solar can carry the bulk of the required decarbonisation of the world’s electricity systems, but the system costs of having 45 per cent wind and solar in the energy mix need only add $11/MWh if the integration is done thoughtfully.

Power Wheeling Programme Must Include Solar And Wind

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By Shakuntala Makhijani , Guest Columnist

Last month, electricity regulator, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), released recommendations for Jamaica's anticipated electricity wheeling programme.

Electricity wheeling has been proposed in Jamaica as a way to promote distributed power generation, especially from renewable-energy sources.

Under the proposed wheeling programme, a company or individual could generate electricity in one part of the country and pay the grid operator - the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) - a fee to transport that power to another location where it will be used.

Because JPS currently has a monopoly on electricity distribution, a company would only be able to send electricity over the grid to be consumed at a location that it also owns. For example, a sugar companythat generates electricity at a sugar refinery using bagasse can send excess power to its offices in Kingston to avoid paying high electricity bills there, but cannot sell electricity to another entity.

Several of Jamaica's large energy consumers are considering participating in the forthcoming wheeling programme to support investments in renewable energy.

Giant Japanese wind farm to replace Fukushima power plant

By Nicholas Brown on 24 January 2013

Cleantechnica 

In the wake of the 2011 Fukishima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Japan has decided to build a 1GW wind farm.

This wind farm is intended to replace the Fukishima nuclear power plant, since it has been partially crippled, and its malfunction raised safety concerns, causing many to oppose nuclear power and avoid the risk associated with the inability of nuclear power plant operators to contain certain reactor disasters.

54 nuclear reactors were shut down because of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Except for the power from two, which already are back online, the power they supplied needs to be replaced.

The new wind farm will be comprised of 143 wind turbines on a platform that is 16 km (9.9 miles) off the coast of Fukishima. It is expected to be built by 2020.

The Greater Gabbard wind farm has 140 wind turbines, three fewer than the planned Fukushima farm. However, the turbines used for the Japanese wind farm are nearly twice as powerful as the ones used at Greater Gabbard.

This wind farm is part of Fukushima’s goal to become completely energy independent by 2040.

The UK is currently leading the offshore wind industry with a keen enthusiasm for offshore wind. But Japan is clearly eyeing the space as well.

A Mighty Wind

By 

Rich Binsacca

 

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“Dear Wind,” began a series of Internet ads launched this past spring by Idaho Power, the Gem State’s largest public utility, designed to deride the value of wind-generated energy. “You’re not here when I need you.”

For researcher and Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, who recently co-authored a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that confirmed enough wind capacity worldwide to power the globe more than 60 times over, the utility’s snarky ads actually ring true ... to an extent.

“Wind is intermittent,” he conceded in an interview for NPR’s Science Friday program in September, a key reason his article advocates using wind for half the world’s energy needs, or about 5.75 terawatts (TW), in a 2030 clean-energy economy.

The balance, he says, should be made up primarily of solar, with a dash of geothermal, hydroelectric, and concentrated (stored) solar energy. “[Wind and solar] are very complementary,” said Jacobson. “When winds are calm, it’s a sunny day, and vice versa. You don’t need expensive wind [energy] storage if you combine them optimally.”

To prove it, Jacobson and his research team overlaid their multisource formula for clean energy generation against two years of power demand in a representative California market. “We were able to match the hour-to-hour power demands ... with 98% reliability,” he said.

So how many 100-meter-tall wind turbines would it take to generate 5.75 TW of energy for electrical power, transportation, and other projected energy needs in 2030? About 4 million, said Jacobson, up from “several thousand” currently in operation worldwide generating about 237.5 megawatts of energy, of which North America accounts for one-fifth.

The Great Transition, Part II: Building a Wind-Centered Economy

NOVEMBER 2, 2012 BY EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE 

X

Editor’s note: If you missed part 1 of this series, it’s available here.

By Lester R. Brown

In the race to transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and avoid runaway climate change, wind has opened a wide lead on both solar and geothermal energy. Solar panels, with a capacity totaling 70,000 megawatts, and geothermal power plants, with a capacity of some 11,000 megawatts, are generating electricity around the world. The total capacity for the world’s wind farms, now generating power in about 80 countries, is near 240,000 megawatts. China and the United States are in the lead.

Over the past decade, world wind electric generating capacity grew at nearly 30 percent per year, its increase driven by its many attractive features and by public policies supporting its expansion. Wind is abundant, carbon-free and nondepletable. It uses no water, no fuel, and little land. Wind is also locally available, scales up easily, and can be brought online quickly. No other energy source can match this combination of features.

One reason wind power is so popular is that it has a small footprint. Although a wind farm can cover many square miles, turbines occupy only 1 percent of that area. Compared with other renewable sources of energy, wind energy yield per acre is off the charts. For example, a farmer in northern Iowa could plant an acre in corn that yields enough grain to produce roughly $1,000 worth of fuel-grade ethanol per year, or he could use that same acre to site a turbine producing $300,000 worth of electricity each year.

sustainablog (http://s.tt/1spxw)

10 more wind energy myths debunked: Madigan claims put to the test by Mike Barnard

Thank you all for your kind words and attention to the first installment of Whoppers of the Anti-wind Brigade, where Max Rheese's perplexingly a-factual views were subject to some scrutiny.  As you may remember, Mr Rheese managed 14 whoopers in a mere 17 minute radio interview covering some 1,685 words.

Our subject today is Senator John Madigan, the first elected federal representative of the Democratic Labour Party in Australia since 1974 and Victoria’s replacement for the entertaining Senator Steve Fielding.

Senator Madigan has been stirring up a name for himself in recent months attacking wind energy. Our goal is to see if he can achieve in a single web-page policy statement of 364 words what Max Rheese took a full radio interview and many more words to achieve. If you would like to play along at home, I would encourage you to review Senator Madigan'sposition on his party’s website (copied as of 31 October  2012 at the bottom of this article).

Those following the issue will remember that just this year Madigan called the wind industry sinister, powerful and dangerous. He’s called wind energy a scandal and he has described his wind campaign as a fight. But just to be clear, we’ll let straight talking John put it in his own words: “I am not and never have been against wind farms, wind energy or green technology.” Okay...

Now on to the show.

Wind Reality 1:  Wind is not heavily subsidized in Australia or the rest of the world

The claim: The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) opposes this highly subsidised method of generating electricity

The data:  Let's define terms. I am going to use the term subsidy imprecisely to mean imbalances in the market that can be quantified in dollar terms.  Direct subsidies are only one kind of market imbalance, so it is important to try to compare apples-to-apples in this conversation.

In those terms, what subsidies do wind farms receive? Well, they actually get no subsidies for construction and certainly nothing from the government. Instead wind farms are issued a renewable energy certificate (now called an LGC) for every megawatt hour of clean energy generated. Energy retailers are required to buy certificates to ‘green up’ their power. In 2012 only 9.15% of the retailers output must be matched, growing to a target of 20% by 2020.

So yes, the Renewable Energy Target, introduced by the Liberals, supported by Labor and endorsed by the Greens, has created an indirect subsidy to encourage the transition to non-polluting energy sources. (The DLP, which told the senate inquiry into the Clean Energy Future package that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, presumably doesn’t understand why anyone would want to transition to clean energy.)

EU Wind Capacity Reaches 100 Gigawatt Mark, Yet Financial Risk Threatens Growth

Reuters  |  Posted: 09/26/2012 6:00 pm EDT Updated: 09/27/2012 3:26 pm EDT

* Low interest rates not translating into cheap loans

* EU austerity measures increase political risk

* Emerging offshore sector can add capacity rapidly (Adds detail on offshore)

By Barbara Lewis

BRUSSELS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Installed EU wind capacity has reached the 100 gigawatt mark - the equivalent of power generated from 39 nuclear plants or a train of coal stretching from Buenos Aires to Brussels - but financial risk threatens growth, industry body EWEA said.

"We have just in the past couple of weeks passed 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity in Europe," Christian Kjaer, CEO of the European Wind Energy Association, told a small group of reporters.

Wind power in Texas keeping out new gas power plants by Nicholas Brown

CleanTechnica

CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby recently wrote an op-ed blaming wind farms for impeding the commission of new natural gas–fired power stations.

To many, it is difficult to guess why wind farms would make it more difficult to construct gas power plants. Let’s dive in.

Wind Farms Generating Cheap Electricity

Modern wind farms generate electricity at a low-cost of $0.097 per kWh (9.7 cents) without subsidies. (This is an average — as wind speeds at wind farms increase, the cost of wind power decreases because the ratio of power generated to the cost of developing the wind farms decreases. Some wind farms, of course, produce electricity much more cheaply than others.)

Add in subsidies for this young technology, and the price drops further.

Now, additionally, it’s worth noting that, while winds are blowing, wind farms can bid to sell their electricity for about as cheap as they need to – because their fuel is free, so it doesn’t really cost anything extra to produce electricity once the wind farms are built. For this reason, we’ve seen wind farms bring the wholesale cost of electricity down to $0some nights (yep, $0.00).

In the most recent Fall, Spring, and Winter, wind farms generated such a large amount of cheap electricity in Doyle’s region that they undercut natural gas power plants during all three seasons (although only 2.5% of the time). At wind speeds of 21mph, the average cost of wind power drops to as little as 2.6 cents per kWh.

Wind power has its limits, but it’s not the sky by Michael D. Lemonick

Climate Central

From the climate’s point of view, wind turbines are a great way to generate electricity. The energy source is absolutely free, and turning breezes into kilowatts releases precisely zero heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Sure, it takes energy to build and transport and assemble turbines — some of it, undoubtedly, derived from fossil fuels — but once that giant pinwheel is up and turning, emissions drop off the map. The other thing people like about wind power is that it’s essentially limitless.

Limitless, that is, unless you’re a scientist who thinks hard about such things. Three of those scientists have been thinking hard about the limits of wind power — and their thoughts have turned into a paper just published in Nature Climate Change.

In principle, they argue, the very existence of wind turbines could slow the planet’s winds to the point where they couldn’t generate any more energy. In practice, fortunately, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

The analysis considers both conventional, ground-based wind turbines and futuristic flying turbines that could take advantage of the steadier, stronger winds that blow at high altitudes. In both cases, a big enough fleet would slow the wind and limit the total energy available for electricity making.

For the flying windmills, that limit would be 1,800 terawatts, or 1.8 billion watts — 100 times more electricity than the entire planet currently uses. The ground-based turbines would top out at a mere 400 terawatts, or 20-ish times current demand.

Solar out back, wind in front: Secrets of a suburban clean energy powerhouse by Sophie Vorrath

For those who visited Mick Harris' home on Sustainable House Day in Melbourne on Sunday, the idea that green living is the preserve of the moneyed classes will have been put to bed. This was no Grand Design of sustainable architecture – Kevin McCloud was nowhere to be seen – but, just as the brochure had promised, a pretty standard 1960s brick veneer home in the suburb of Ivanhoe. A pretty standard home, that is, with two grid-connected solar arrays, a battery storage system fed by three more PV arrays, an solar-powered electric milk truck in the garage, a Hills Hoist in the back yard, and a wind turbine in the front.

In the roughly three years that Harris – a sustainability and clean energy pioneer, managing director at Envirogroup and a specialist consultant to the Alternative Technology Association – has owned the house, he has transformed it into a solar and wind powerhouse, which produces much more clean, renewable energy than it needs and – having got in before Victoria's recent solar feed-in tariff cuts– even contributes to the household's income, earning 66c/kwH for the electricity it sends back to the grid.

So what are the specs? Let's start with the solar. At the front of the house is the "solar pergola" – a custom-built verandah made of 12x 40W thin-film solar panels which, as well as providing shade for the house in summer, produce energy – 480W altogether.

The PV pergola, along with two more rooftop arrays –  a six-panel, 1100W array on the northern-facing roof, and a four-panel 740W array on the west-facing roof – all feed electricity into a 24 volt, 330 amp-hour battery bank (pictured below) at the side of the house, which feed a 1,000W Latronics inverter, which supplies all the power for the house's lights (a lot of them LED), fridge, TV and computer.

The battery system ensures that power is always available for the house – even during a blackout – and with each household appliance matched to two power points – one from the grid and one from the solar/battery system – you have the choice of running them on- or off-grid.

As for the two grid-connected solar systems, the first – located on the front of the house – uses eight 185W monocrystalline panels to produce 1480W and feeds into a grid-connected inverter, which in turn feeds into the house's switchboard and runs its other appliances, such as the electric stove. The second grid-connected system, which is on the roof of the bungalow/garage at the back of the property (pictured below), uses 18x 185W monocrystalline panels to produce 3,300W.

Offshore wind gathers speed in Europe by Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Germany took a big step to addressing the bottleneck in its offshore wind roll-out last week, as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet backed a new liability regime for grid connection delays. Some of the costs will be passed onto consumers. “We lacked investments in wind parks and grid projects” because it was not clear who would pay for possible delays, minister of economy Philipp Roesler said in Berlin. “With this regulation, the likelihood that liability losses will arise is now minimised.” The bill is likely to be accelerated to ensure its enactment before the year's end.

There was also good news for offshore wind in the UK, as EDP Renovaveis applied for a permit in Scotland to build a 1.5GW offshore wind farm. That would be the world’s largest. The project is the first to seek planning permission under the UK’s Round Three of offshore wind development, which amounted to 32GW of licences awarded in 2010.

The world’s largest wind turbine maker, Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, saw its shares surge 26 per cent last week after it said it is in talks with Mitsubishi Industries over possible “strategic cooperation”. It was the second biggest gainer last week on the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, after Hong Kong LED manufacturer Neo-Neon Holding, which announced a new production process. The NEX ended the week 0.9% down, however, as gains for wind and energy conversion stocks were offset by declines in solar and power storage stocks. First Solar fell 19.3% as it halted deliveries to Agua Caliente, the world’s largest PV project in Arizona. Its explanation was that construction is ahead of schedule, and it needed to slow down to meet contractual milestones.

In the US, President Barack Obama finalised new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, doubling them to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The White House said the standards would add around $US1,800 to the average cost of a vehicle by 2025 but lead to fuel savings of more than $US8,000 over its lifetime.

The development became the latest joust in clean energy rhetoric in the US presidential race. A spokesperson for Republican challenger Mitt Romney said, “Governor Romney opposes the extreme standards that President Obama has imposed.” Obama first announced the new standards in July 2011, flanked by representatives of the auto industry. “These fuel standards represent the single most important step we've ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” he said.

Wind accounts for 58% of energy use in South Australia by Giles Parkinson

It’s been another big week for wind production in South Australia – as another spring weather system with high winds makes wind energy the dominant force in local energy production.

According to figures pulled together by consultants Intelligent Energy Systems using data from the Australian Market Operator, wind energy produced accounted for 57.9 per cent of demand in the state on Tuesday, and followed up with 55 per cent of total demand on Wednesday.

At the morning peak of 10am, it accounted for 65 per cent – and in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday, when demand was weakest, it accounted for 80 per cent.

These graphs below illustrates what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday. Put together by Intelligent Energy Systems, the key bits to look at are the black line which shows demand. The dark and light blue shades indicate wind energy (dark blue is older installations, light blue the newer ones). Orange represents gas.

The pink stuff at the bottom represents exports from South Australia to other states. On Tuesday, the state was exporting almost all day, as the wind output was quite consistent. On Wednesday, it exported for most of the day and there  is a bit of pink at the top in the late afternoon to indicate coal imported from Victoria. (South Australia's coal generators are in mothballs right now due to the impact of wind, and lower demand, and the carbon price).

Anti-wind turbine syndrome: We need to clear the air by Ketan Joshi

Wind turbines are subject to a disproportionate array of myths, compared to other generation technologies. From throwaway lines about bird deaths, to catastrophic misunderstandings of science and engineering, the opponents of wind energy tirelessly propagate odd falsehoods, based on a ferocious antagonism towards wind energy. These fictions, often deployed in rapid sequence, are difficult to combat. Significantly, the anti-wind lobby binds these falsehoods to a passionately emotive ethos, manifesting as unfiltered hostility. This tactic exposes an unnerving and worrisome fact – to influence public sentiment, evidence is unnecessary – myth and contempt might easily suffice.

A protest at a wind farm development in Midlothian, Scotland in 2006 saw the burning of a wind turbine effigy. The wind farm was ultimately not approved. - Photograph by Julie Howden Source: National Wind Watch

Earlier this year, climate sceptic James Delingpole published an article in The Australian, outlining his views of wind energy. He concluded with this quote:

"As a NSW sheep farmer fighting tooth and nail to stop a wind farm development near his beloved home told me the other day in trenchant style: 'The wind-farm business is bloody well near a pedophile ring. They're fucking our families and knowingly doing so'."

Publishing comments that equate the wind industry with a pedophile ring, whilst unexceptional for Delingpole, might once have been considered a claim too wretched for a major national broadsheet. Delingpole's article was re-posted more than 500 times, mostly by anti-wind groups. Astonishingly, the Hamilton Veterinary Practice, in western Victoria also republished the article, in a blog post on May 20. Though it is traditionally unusual to chance across industry-wide slander about child abuse on the website of a small rural vet clinic, it comes as no surprise when bedded in the context of the efforts of anti-wind groups across Australia.

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Renewables Shine through India’s Blackout to a Clean Energy Future

CleanTechnica   
August 11th, 2012

Land Rover Our Planet/Flikr

By: Silvio Marcacci

India’s recent blackouts are a case study for what happens when power demand outstrips the capacity of an aging grid fed by centralized fossil fuel power plants without smart grid technology – rolling blackouts become a way of life. But they may also be just the opportunity renewable energy needed to power India’s future.

There are lessons to learn from India’s troubles, especially as climate change drives electrical demand up while changing traditional water access and weather patterns. India relies heavily on coal and hydropower to meet its electricity needs. But when rising coal prices and an exceptionally dry monsoon season limited the ability of power producers to ramp up supply, the grid couldn’t keep up.

And the problem is only going to get worse.  An estimated 40 percent of India’s population isn’t connected to the grid, the country’s economy is growing between 8-10 percent per year, and it expects to add 88 gigawatts (GW) of new generation capacity by 2017. All that demand must be met one way or another, and for many Indian policymakers, that means more coal plants.

But what if instead of dirty coal, India’s yawning energy gap was filled with distributed renewables and microgrids? It’s not only possible, but is already happening.

Wind and solar keep the lights on

Wind energy was credited with ending the blackout in Western India’s Jodhpur state almost immediately, according to local reports. “The power generated through wind energy put an end to the outage within two hours, providing us with around 800-900 MW power,” one local energy official said. “We immediately switched to wind power and resumed power supply at hospitals, water pumps, railways, high court and administrative offices.”

An innovative off-grid solar project also managed to keep the lights on during the blackout. Meerwada, a remote central Indian village, had no access to electricity until SunEdison built a 14-kilowatt solar plant in the community for the same monthly price per resident for power from kerosene

Govt strives to generate 143,000MW from solar and wind energy potentials - Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production

Rich of solar and wind energy resources having the capacity to generate around 143,000MW of electricity, the government has embarked upon various plans of attracting foreign investments to help bridge demand-supply gap by exploiting alternative energy potentials.

As per official estimates, the government is eyeing around $1.2 to $ 2.7 billion investment merely through wind sector, though dozens of identical projects are also on cards to woo foreign investment in solar energy sector.

Currently, Pakistan is developing wind power plants in Jhimpir, Gharo, Keti Bandar and Bin Qasim in Sindh what the government believes would not only reduce electricity shortages, but will also help ease the burden of oil imports costing over $12 billion annually.

The fair category of wind speed in most parts of the world is between 6.2 and 6.9 metres per second. There are a few places that come under good category where wind speed is between 7 and 7.3 m/s. However, the wind speed in the Sindh corridor is stronger than the above two categories and it stands in the excellent category that is between 7.5 and 7.7 m/s.

According to a USAID report, Pakistan has the potential of producing 150,000 megawatts of wind energy, of which only the Sindh corridor can produce 40,000 megawatts.

Keeping in view these rich potentials, the government has plans to achieve electric power up to 2500 MW by the end of 2015 from wind energy to bring down energy shortage.