Windmills of Your Mind?

People around the world will easily associate windmills or images of it, like the one below, with Holland or anything Dutch, from landscape artwork, photos, postcards, etc.  Readers past high school literature are also reminded of Don Quixote. At one time in Holland's history there were more than 10,000 fully functioning windmills used to pump water, run all kinds of rotary and pulley driven machines and later on as a source to power electric generators. Today, meticulously preserved for posterity and as tourist attractions there are only 1200 of them left and one day each May the Dutch observes National Windmill Day.

It is believed that as early as 2000 BC windmills had been used to pump water and grind grains.

Today, another image is more ubiquitous. It is the tri-bladed wind turbine that is more imposing than the old windmills for sheer size and height. The largest wind turbine in the world can be found in Hawaii. It is 20 stories tall at its hub and each blade is the length of a football field.  Data from 2015 showed that the 114 windmills in Hawaii produced 6.4% of its total electrical energy needs. 

But first, as a way of acknowledgement, let me recognize the French composer Michel Legrand's musical score of "Windmills of Your Mind" and lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman and the original vocalist, Noel Harrison, who sang the Oscar winning song from "The Thomas Crown Affair" that starred Steve McQueen. There, I won't feel bad or guilty about borrowing it as a title for this musing.  By the way, Andy Williams was the first choice to sing it but he declined. However, the much beloved crooner who passed away a while back is instead well known for his signature song, "Moon River".

I digressed.

So, wind turbines it is, for the idle mind to ponder. What do we make of the data accumulated thus far?  We will not make this an either/or debate for or against wind turbines. But we owe it to ourselves to know the hub and rotor blades - faces of the same .. 

"As the images unwind, like the circles that you find                                   In the windmills of your mind!"

The Economics of Wind Turbines 

1. The largest turbines built, so far, can harness energy to power 600 homes in England.

2. Wind turbines on average will operate at 35-65% (onshore-offshore, respectively) of their theoretical maximum capacity because wind changes in strength and direction on  a daily basis.

3. MidAmerican Energy announced they were about to build the tallest wind turbine in the US, a 2.3 MW 554 foot tall (with 173 foot blade extended) about the same as the Washington Monument. The Hawaiian turbine will look like its little brother.

4. Money Making Machine

Note to consider only the 35-65 % of capacity. 100% is only theoretical. 

5. "In 2017, wind energy made up about 6.3 percent of the United States’ total electricity generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s compared with about 30 percent each for coal and natural gas and 20 percent for nuclear energy. At 7.5 percent, hydropower contributed the most out of any renewable source. Solar energy made up only 1.3 percent".

6. "The general rule-of-thumb for wind farm spacing is that turbines are about 7 rotor diameters away from each other. So an 80-meter (262-foot) rotor would need to be 560 meters -- more than a third of a mile -- from adjacent turbines. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have proposed that twice as much spacing would increase overall efficiency".

So,

What Does It Take To Harness Wind Power In Lieu Of Oil? 

1.  I calculated that each turbine will need 1.5 acres of land based on the above recommendation.  A "grand total of 1,642,000 turbines will be needed to replace oil over the next 50 years". That is assuming that the turbines operate at 100% capacity, which they will not.

Just for grins, I calculated that 1.6 million turbines will require a land area (or water, offshore) of 3,854 square miles.  That will be about the size of the state of Rhode Island. It will be silly, of course, to place all of them in one place because they will need to be spread out across the globe to be close to the consuming household that will need electricity.

2. "A 2 MW (megawatt) wind turbine weighs 1688 tons: 1300 tons concrete, 295 tons steel, 48 tons iron, 24 tons fiberglass, 4 tons copper, .4 tons neodymium, .065 tons dysprosium and more (Guezuraga 2012; USGS 2011).. an average house weighs: from 72 to 104 tons.  So each 2 MW wind turbine weighs as much as 23 homes."

3. Wind power is renewable. Keep in mind though that the wind turbine itself is not because each one has a life span of 25 years maximum based on current estimates although there is not enough data at the moment. Furthermore, maintenance on average is about $45-50,000 annually.

4. "Assuming a normal lifetime of a wind turbine, about 5 pounds of steel, fiberglass, and other materials are needed to generate 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity. If you include the concrete foundation, the weight jumps up to 25 pounds per MWh." It is not a trivial matter to consider, especially that current refineries, pipelines, all peripheral infrastructures are  all "sunk" costs already - producing energy.  Furthermore, to get rid of them will mean abatement costs that are difficult to assess or contemplate at the moment.

5. If people around the world - governments, scientific establishments and financial institutions - will put their mind to it, it is conceivable that fossil fuel sources of energy can be replaced by renewable energy. The question is the will and at what expense.

Things to Consider:

A. An inventory of different kinds of fossil energy source must be maintained because: (1) hospitals and building complexes will permanently need diesel or natural gas powered engines for emergency power in case electricity goes out for any reason; (2) For national defense, tanks, jet engines, all military transports will need fossil fuel (diesel and aviation fuel). Even nuclear submarines have emergency diesel engines in case of reactor failure. (3) For all general services, fire trucks and emergency vehicles  and excavation and mining equipment will need fossil fuel. (4).  For general transportation, intercontinental air travel, container and cruise ships, excavations, heavy rail transport, etc., fossil fuel is still necessary. (5). To maintain that relatively miniscule inventory, a "skeleton" oil extraction and refining infrastructure must be maintained at tremendous cost. 

B. Civic duty and responsibility ought to be tempered with an open mind. There will always be a Greta Thunberg, sincere proponents of every conceivable cause but there must always be a pragmatic view requirement from each of us to make wise decisions toward anything perceived to be harmful to the environment. Drastic, draconian measures must be restrained with real assessments free of emotions and semi-truths.

Facts and information may be consistent but, as always, it is often about the story. Or, who is able to tell the most convincing one.  It is about what can be spun to garner the most credibility. It is always a matter of which tales get the most credit or persuasive power, no pun intended.