Link to show where the maintenance costs are significantly higher than the costs of operating a nuclear plant. After all, there is no waste to store or recycle, there is no need for water for coolant, and there is no need to mine and purify anything, let alone radioactive materials.
Realize that many of the costs on Nuclear are created through regulation, both good ad bad. Another problem with technology in general is that profits are expected, from investment, before change and retrofit is applied. That needs to be addressed. Reprocessing needs to be addressed.
Wind energy technology
Since the 1980s, when the first commercial wind turbines were deployed, their installed capacity, efficiency and visual design have all improved enormously.
Although many different pathways towards the ideal turbine design have been explored, significant consolidation has taken place over the past decade. The vast majority of commercial turbines now operate on a horizontal axis with three evenly spaced blades. These are attached to a rotor from which power is transferred through a gearbox to a generator. The gearbox and generator are contained within a housing called a nacelle. Some turbine designs avoid a gearbox by using direct drive. The electricity is then transmitted down the tower to a transformer and eventually into the grid network.
Wind turbines can operate across a wide range of wind speeds - from 3-4 metres per second up to about 25 m/s, which translates into 90 km/h (56 mph), and would be the equivalent of gale force 9 or 10.
The majority of current turbine models make best use of the constant variations in the wind by changing the angle of the blades through 'pitch control', by turning or “yawing” the entire rotor as wind direction shifts and by operating at variable speed. Operation at variable speed enables the turbine to adapt to varying wind speeds and increases its ability to harmonise with the operation of the electricity grid. Sophisticated control systems enable fine tuning of the turbine’s performance and electricity output.
Modern wind technology is able to operate effectively at a wide range of sites – with low and high wind speeds, in the desert and in freezing arctic climates. Clusters of turbines collected into wind farms operate with high availability, are generally well integrated with the environment and accepted by the public. Using lightweight materials to reduce their bulk, modern turbine designs are sleek, streamlined and elegant.
The main design drivers for current wind technology are:
• reliability
• grid compatibility
• acoustic performance (noise reduction)
• maximum efficiency and aerodynamic performance
• high productivity for low wind speeds
• offshore expansion
Wind turbines have also grown larger and taller. The generators in the largest modern turbines are 100 times the size of those in 1980. Over the same period, their rotor diameters have increased eight-fold. The average capacity of turbines installed around the world during 2007 was 1,492 kW, whilst the largest turbine currently in operation is the Enercon E126, with a rotor diameter of 126 metres and a power capacity of 6 MW.
The main driver for larger capacity machines has been the offshore market, where placing turbines on the seabed demands the optimum use of each foundation. Fixing large foundations in the sea bed, collecting the electricity and transmitting it to the shore all increase the costs of offshore development over those on land. Although the offshore wind farms installed so far have used turbines in the capacity range up to 3.6 MW, a range of designs of 5 MW and above are now being deployed and are expected to become the ‘standard’ in the coming years.
For turbines used on land, however, the past few years have seen a levelling of turbine size in the 1.5 to 3 MW range. This has enabled series production of many thousands of turbines of the same design, enabling teething problems to be ironed out and reliability increased.
Ongoing innovations in turbine design include the use of different combinations of composite materials to manufacture blades, especially to ensure that their weight is kept to a minimum, variations in the drive train system to reduce loads and increase reliability, and improved control systems, partly to ensure better compatibility with the grid network.
For more information on wind turbine technology, see Wind Energy - The Facts.
“We need to work much harder to find ways to implement the vast range of low-carbon technologies that have already been developed. We need to act now. Delay will only increase the seriousness of the problems we need to reverse.”
Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, The Economist, January 2005
Global Wind Energy Council - GWEC: Technology
I do not want to even hear it. God I hate NYC humidity.
