Wind Energy "at parity" with Fossil Fuels ?

NEOH
NEOH Solar Expert Posts: 74 ✭✭
in Wind Power Generation #1
According to the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) ...
Average installed wind power costs are now on parity with fossil fuel plants. Regional results are more sensitive to fuel and transmission costs, but the trend cannot be ignored. In 2010, China installed 19 GW of wind capacity, as much as the rest of the world combined. Last year saw an addition of 38 GW worldwide, employing nearly a million workers. With tower and transmission costs somewhat fixed, attention is shifting to increasing the size and capacity of offshore turbines. Today's 5 MW turbines have rotor diameters of 120 m. European Union sponsored research is looking at 20 MW units with rotor diameters of 200 m. Achieving this will require improved blade designs and increased gearbox reliability.
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  • solarvic
    solarvic Solar Expert Posts: 1,071 ✭✭✭✭
    #2
    Re: Wind Energy "at parity" with Fossil Fuels ?

    GE is designing a new wind turbine without gear boxs because of the problems with gearboxes. I was told that the rest of a wind turbine outlast 2 or 3 gearboxs. It has a big drive shaft on the top of the tower with the blades on one end and the generator on the other end. I saw the drawings just before I retired as My employer was bidding on the project. I am kind of curious if they ever made any of them yet. Solarvic
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  • peakbagger
    peakbagger Solar Expert Posts: 341 ✭✭✭
    #3
    Re: Wind Energy "at parity" with Fossil Fuels ?

    Northern Power has a 2.5 MW direct drive up and running and for sale. They share some of the patents for direct dirve turbines with GE(who bought them from Enron at bankruptcy).

    The concept of parity is not valid when comparing dispatchable power with intermittent power (wind). Sort of the apples and oranges discussion. Currently when there is lots of wind and little demand for power, the value of gird power in Texas is negative meaning anyone generating has to pay for the to sell power to the grid, on the other hand when the wind isnt blowing and there is a big demand for power, the value of available power is in the hundreds of dollars per KW for short periods of time. So when is wind at parity with fossil fuels? By the way when these low wind/high demand days days occur its fossel fuels (and "dirty" Mexican power) that keeps the lights on.
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  • drees
    drees Solar Expert Posts: 482 ✭✭✭
    #4
    Re: Wind Energy "at parity" with Fossil Fuels ?
    peakbagger wrote: »
    By the way when these low wind/high demand days days occur its fossel fuels (and "dirty" Mexican power) that keeps the lights on.
    Funny - wasn't it earlier this year during a cold snap in Texas that wind was keeping the lights on while all the gas plants were shutting down?

    Just sayin' ...

    When wind costs nothing to run once the tower is built, it's always going to run over gas/coal/etc since it can always underbid them in price.

    As for wind being "intermittent" - you always need backup generation regardless of the source. You're going to see a lot more grid storage coming online regardless - it's cleaner and more efficient than having "spinning reserves" to balance the grid.
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