Wind farms are a great way to capture wind energy as evidenced by the recent increases in wind turbine farm installations. When you look at raw output wind turbines can’t put out the power modern combustion power stations can. Fossil fuels have a high energy density and as long as these fuels are obtained at reasonable rates the economics of wind power will make it hard to justify.
This is not as horrible as it might intially seem. The truth is, most things we’ve grown to take for granted in life require a solid industrial base. These industries include manufacturing, timber, metallurgy, mining and even production of equipment used to harvest our food supply. And this industrial base requires potent sources of energy.
Let’s face it, when it comes to smelting ores, machining metals, and forging steel (just to name a few), these types of operations take a whole lot of juice. Large and variable infrastructures are difficult to power on wind or solar energy alone. The driving energy and motive requirements for processing is too great.
This does not mean that wind turbine systems are undesirable, however. Harnessing wind power has been around for centuries and the basic design is a simple piece of machinery that taps an energy source that is free. It simply means that wind turbines are better for supplying residential power, and for small scale commercial applications.
To illustrate, a commercial size power plant capable of 500 MegaWatt output will fit in the area of 1/4 square mile without challenge. As a comparison consider a wind power farm of equal capacity. At 2 MegaWatts per wind turbine, then over 250 wind turbines would have to be put in place. Think about the amount of space this would require! Also consider a consistent supply of wind is required which is not always the case.
There are excellent locations and conditions for wind power and it should be part of our energy portfolio. But we can not abandon our combustion technologies where efficiencies and pollution controls continue to improve, combustion is the heart of our economy driving our heavy industry.
Tags: wind power, wind turbine