Tilting at windmills
It's free, plentiful and non-polluting, but as the world's demands for energy increase each year, can wind power replace our reliance on non-renewable energy sources?
Wind power has caught a favorable breeze as the renewable energy source of choice among governments hoping to reduce carbon emissions. In March 2007, EU countries agreed a target to source 20 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.
According to the Global Wind Energy Council, world-wide wind energy generation increased by 25 percent in 2006 from the previous year to 74 gigawatts. The EU remains the largest market for wind power, with the U.S., China and India set to expand their wind carpet portfolio to cope with increasingly voracious energy needs.
Despite the current wind rush, wind power remains a tiny fraction of global energy production. However wind power advocates, such as Wind Force 12, an axis of companies in the wind power industy and Greenpeace, believe that 1,250 gigawatts, 12 percent of projected global energy needs, can be achieved by 2020.
It's a considerable challenge - the world's electicity needs are set to increase by two thirds by 2020 - but investment in renewable energy sources is increasing at a pace. Industy analysts Enrnst & Young have projected that investment in renewables will rise to $750 billion in the next decade.
"Whether or not governments meet these targets is down to how quickly off-shore wind farms grow. To an extent that is down to how much governments support these programs," said David Infield, professor of renewable energy systems at Loughborough University.
Hoping for a steady breeze
If the flow of capital to windpower looks to be constant for the next decade, the fundamental problem with wind power is its unpredictability. Some areas of the world are geographically more favorbale for wind power, but even within local areas wind farms are subject to surges and drops in power minute by minute.
Countering the fluctuations between surges and drops in power falls to a more traditional form of back-up power, usually in the form of coal, gas or even nuclear fuelled power stations.
At best wind farms operate at 50 percent capacity, such as those situated in the north of Scotland, but the constant fluctuations in wind speed often mean that they operate closer to 25 percent. In comparison coal and gas power stations run at an average of 60 percent capacity.
Critics of onshore wind farms often cite them as unsightly and noisy, plus the disruption and fatal consequences they can have on migrating wildlife. Offshore wind farms are seen as the solution to these problems, but can be four times as expensive to build as onshore wind carpets.
Even with increased efficiency wind alone will probably not power our future.
"Wind should really be used to relieve the pressure on the grid by powering things locally. It should never be part of any strategic grid system because you can't tell what the wind is going to do one minute to the next," said Campbell Dunford chief executive of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a UK group that opposes onshore wind farms, but supports renewable energy.
Searching for the Holy Grail
A fundamental problem is that the electricity produced by a wind turbine cannot be easily or cheaply stored.
Dunford describes the means to store energy produced by wind power on an industrial scale as the "holy grail" of alternative energy.
"It can be done on a small scale, and a lot of resources are being poured into it, but it is still a long way off."
Flow cells, a type of battery that has the capacity to store varying amouts of electricity, have been touted as a step on the way to realising this quest.
They have been used to back up the wind farms on King Island that lies between the Australian mainland and Tasmania. Before the cells were introduced the island relied on diesel generators to back up power when the wind wasn't blowing. However with the introduction of a huge rechargable flow battery in 2003 the use of the diesel generators was halved.
Making flow batteries cost-effective and more efficient remains a challenge.
"Flow cells have been around for a long time now and have received a lot of research and development support, but they haven't shown the promise that was expected of them," said Infield.
"Nevertheless there are researchers that are exploring new chemical combinations that they believe will enhance the performance and eventually lead to lower costs, but they are still a long way from being proven."
What do you think?
Wind must become a cornerstone of a globally integrated energy policy. The means of storing the energy must be developed to give a reliable supply. It is not sufficient to use wind power as a novelty as this article suggests. We must make significant investment for the future of our world. An investment that is beyond the courage of most decision makers with a 4 or 5 year political lifespan.
Wind is a competitive replacement for fossil fuel. If the US would have invested the $500 billion, they wasted in Iraq, on wind turbines, the U.S. would be the sole electricity supplier for both North and South America, for the coming 20 years. Even densely populated areas have enough space for wind turbines.
Storage of electricity produced by wind: here in our country Switzerland there are enormous storage possibilities in our artificial lakes up in the Alps. When wind energy is produced it can be used to pump water - after turbination - up to the lake from where the same water can be used downhill through turbines to generate electricity. It is almost a kind of perpetual mobile: water down = energy, water up with wind energy.
I guess it would be nice if you could utilise this energy, but for my country Indonesia which has a lot of source power the technology has not yet arrived.
I think solar and wind energy is the best even though they are expensive to set up but that's a price you pay once compared to monthly hydro bills which keep fluctuating. I am a businessman who's main goal is to improve household incomes in Luweero district. I know solar power will do well here. Those who have set it up so far are a happy bunch.
I would love, so much to contribute to the development of non-fossil fuel or alternative energy. It is alarming the rate which people down here depend on kerosene, petrol and diesel.
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