I am a newbie at posting using this software but I do try to read all of Jerome's wind articles as soon as he puts them up.
I do appreciate the mention that we are trying to do something over here with feed-in tariffs. Indiana's rep Matt Pierce putting in a bill in Indianapolis is quite a development, being a former Hoosier (a person from the state of Indiana).
The idea is gaining momentum, and as I said, the folks who were so diametrically opposed are moving on.
As you know there's been a change of management at AWEA. That may not mean a change of direction, but then again it doesn't rule it out either. Paul Gipe
I was at the AWEA supply chain conference in Des Moines in April of last year, and spent a day at the Wind Energy program at Iowa Lakes Community College. The result was this article I wrote on DailyKos: Can the U.S. achieve 20% wind energy by 2030? http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/14/17722/3424/955/515691
If I recall the numbers correctly, the DoE report on 20% wind energy by 2030 calls for building 100,000 wind turbines of 2.5 mw to 5.0 mw each. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your goal of ~1,000,000 MW of wind generating capacity is only twice that of the DoE, though you are looking at a 10-year goal.
I'm thinking more in terms of 50% wind energy by 2020, which means 250,000 wind turbines built in 11 years. If I have the numbers correct, using an average of 4.0 mw, you and I are talking about pretty much the same goal. If you concur, may I use your numbers and cite your name?
Most offshore environments have far less turbulence than on land, allowing for a larger scale-up. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
{Quoting internal accompaniment: Say yes, please say yes, please say yes ...} I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
the game changes if the canals allow shipping to other Great Lakes, because turbines will not come in through the St. Lawrence. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
I think the Detroit River is around 500m wide at its narrowest, so I get the impression that largish ships have no trouble between Erie, Huron, and Michigan. There are locks connecting Huron to Superior, which could act as a bottleneck similar to the St. Lawrence ... I don't know the capacity of the Soo Locks off the top of my head. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Lake shipping is not a problem. Minimum depths are usually more than 26 feet in harbors/Welland Canal/and especially the Sault (Soo) Locks. The Sault locks were built for massive shipments of bulk commodities like iron ore, limestone, cement, coal and grain. Lake ore freights are typically over 1000 feet long, but some of the smaller 700 ft ones (Edmund Fitzgerald fame) also haul ore. There are even some smallish grain freighters only 500 ft in length.
Oswego is a small town in NY on lake Ontario. When Vestas was delivering the 198 V82 units for what eventually was named the Maple Ridge wind farm, they used that tiny port quite a lot - all major parts were delivered to Oswego by ship - towers, blades and nacelles (and probably a lot of concrete, too. The same goes for many of the turbines installed along the Lake Huron shoreline - ship delivery to either at Sarnia, Kincardine or especially Owen Sound. It's a natural.
Nb41
Of course, the real answer is the wind potential is often a function of what price you can get for the electricity. Trying to compete with an old polluting coal burner like the one near Ludington is hopeless (less than 4 c/kw-hr production cost). That's a big hurdle to get over. States like Michigan are pretty hooked on supercheap coal based electricity. Besides, Michigan is over 180 meters above sealevel - raising ocean waters by 20 to 40 meters is not immediately their problem......
Anyway, another source of information on Great Lakes wind potential can be found at http://www.greengold.org/wind/engineer.html ---> "A Great Potential". For 0 to 20 meters, maximum potential is about 150 GW, and for the 0 to 40 meter depths, about 250 GW. It's definitely enough to power up the US North Coast/Canadian South Coast.
One of these days I should update it.
So, lets split the difference and say there is 30,000 km^2 of usable Michigan area for the Big Cold One. At 8 MW delivered per km^2 (Horns Rev value, adjusted for the lower wind speed). There's 240 GW of average output all by itself - or about 50% of the entire US demand. Of course, this is deep water foundations here (in some cases, over 400 meters), and it is cold and not very friendly waters (one (and perhaps 2) of Jacques Cousteau's sons died in these waters), so its is not a trivial matter like, say, Lake St Clair, which has lower winds but an average depth of 6 meters.
And the Michigan UP is a great place to store electricity via pumped water, especially in the Western part - lots of 500 to 1000 ft drops, and largely uninhabited. That same goes for a lot of the Wisconsin and Ontario coastal areas (maybe only 300 feet for Ontario, but that encompasses a LOT of area. The best storage site would probably be Northern Minnesota - the Mesabi Iron Range, for example.
These could easily store the peak supply for the Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis-St Paul-Detroit and Cleveland regions. Just add HVDC and away you go, although it's best to distribute the pumped hydro in a more dispersed patter, But still, Lake Superior could be the battery for much of the Midwest US, pumped hydro speaking. And I bet it would require a lot of employment to do that...cool.
And yes, keep selling those books. You should have a new one out in April.
My thinking has evolved since that 1 million MW piece. That was done for a special event. Since then I've upped the ante in response to Gore's challenge. This will be in the new book but is on the web site as presentations. Check the piece I did for ASPO-USA in Sacramento last year. I am up to 2.5 million MW for both the USA and Canada, but that can be dramatically reduced with "conservation", an absolute must here in North America.
Because I don't always follow these exchanges, it may be best to correspond directly. Paul Gipe
