I guess it is true wind energy, or any electric form of energy including nuclear, is horrible when used directly for heating purposes, but who is pushing for wind electricity to heat houses? The sensible method would be use the electricity to drive heat pumps, to pump heat from the earth. Large scale experiments here in the Netherlands seem to work fine.
Wind farms, connected to the general circuit, at a european scale can be the answer (among a few others) and we might be going in the good direction, but the cultural needs of our societies (lighting at night as we work all day,"security" lighting of cities, multiplying appliances as a fashion trend, etc.) that have to be addressed at the same time or it won't work... "What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
Anyhow you're far north to me :-) "What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
Your point about costly investment is good, especially if you keep in mind that to have renewable house heating, you have to have both. Heat pumps to allow efficient electricity based heating, plus wind/solar to have renewable electricity, and this has to compete with a gaspipe+central heating,or even coal ovens.
A question to which I do not know the direct answer: is a heat pump run on fossil-fuel generated electricity more efficient than direct fossil heating? I seem to remember that a heat pump's big savings came from replacing aircos in summer, not from heating in winter.
On the other hand, we have plenty of coal and natural gas, so we'll burn that all up first.
No. The point is, the concept of "primary energy", as originally developed for fossil fuels, means the entire energy release of fuel burning, whatever ratio of it is actually used. Thus when you use the same amount of coal for home heating and electricity generation, the end-use energy will be greater for the first, but the primary energy will remain the same. And the same way, if you increase power plant efficiency, the same amount of fuel will generate a higher amount of end-use energy from the same amount of primary energy.
The concept gets murkier for non-fossil sources of energy. For nuclear energy, one can count the heat generated by nuclear fission as the primary energy, with the electricity generated by the steam taking up that heat as the end-use energy (well, minus grd losses). For wind power, there is no fuel, but one can consider the sum of electricity generated and the consumption of the turbine's own motors as primary energy. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
To compare the first to wind energy production, be it electric power or 'primary wind power' is of course silly, unless most of the non-electric coal power would be used for useful purposes, which isn't the case AFAIK.
Using the total primary energy release from coal is of course even stronger number-pumping in favor of coal, but at least it adresses a real problem with current renewables: most of them are at least ballpark cost competitive when it comes to electricity generation, but not for low-quality heat generation. But I don't see how this is any different for nuclear energy. It's not as if we are going to use excess nuclear heat to heat buildings.
Oh. You have a point: I checked, actually the latter.
Agreed on your points. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
