Some residents of Taralga don’t like windmills and have sent me the following poster picture Download file (180 kb).
It came with the following text:
“Place on notice boards, dart boards, toilet doors……the mind boggles. Let’s just get the message out. No prizes for the most original use…………….”
I am not sure that windmills are the most efficient generators of electricity, and the people of Taralga (NE of Canberra) have a right to protest, but I actually think the windmills in the picture look rather beautiful.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Ask them if they would like a coal mine instead.
Unfortunate to try and say one imposition is better than another. Why not agree that both are inappropriate? Doesn’t have to be either/or. The picture shows only about 16 of a proposed 62, (down from 87,)turbines which stretch for 10 kms across our lovely hillsides. Serious reading shows that they are a corporate con. Don’t generate enough power to mitigate anything! Overseas investors like them though!
Glenda – how do you propose to get your electricity then?
I would like to know the approximate life of a wind mill. What happens to them when they have done their time? Can they be dismantled? Do they always look such a brilliant white colour?
They can be dismantled.
The seem to always be white – probably because it looks good and because you need to be able to see them from an aircraft – i have seen turbines with the base painted green and fading to white.
Wind turbines do produce enough electricity to reduce greenhouse emissions, contrary to what Glenda says.
Germany is smaller in area than NSW, and has a similar level of wind speed.
At start 2005, http://windpower-monthly.com/WPM:WINDICATOR:420362 , Germany had 16,600 megawatts of installed wind power. By comparison, NSW has a total of about 13,000 MW of installed power generation, much of which only operates for a handful of days per year – very hot/cold days when demand peaks. Assuming you could accomodate it on the grid, there is more than enough wind in NSW to power NSW, and more than enough wind in Australia to power the country.
Of course without storage, the grid can’t accomodate that much wind power. Something like 10-20% of total generation could be made windpower without problems. A study done for the Australian Greenhouse Office suggested that the Australian grid could accomodate 9,000 MW of wind power.
At current rates of greenhouse mitigation, a 10-20% reduction in power emissions would be a huge step forward.
Oh, and I mentioned before that NSW had 13,000 MW, most of which only operates for a handful of days per year. The peaky nature of our electricty demand ensures that there will always be plenty of idle generation suitable for backing up wind power, and you don’t need to install additional generation to back up wind power.
Approximate life of a wind turbine: 20 years. Maybe 15 in a non-optimal highly turbulent/choppy wind area.
Landowners can (should, do) lock into the agreement with the wind developer that the turbines be removed at the end of their life.
Newer variable speed wind turbines also will last longer and give more output as the do not have a gearbox. Older types only produce electricity when the windspeed reaches a certain threshhold so the wind turbine can turn at exactly 50 rpm or 100 rpm, depending on how it is wound, to sychronise with the electricy grid which is AC 50Hz.
Variable speed wind turbines however turn at any speed and electronics produce the precise 50hz power from the output of the wind turbine. No gearbox means almost no maintenance, longer life and lower noise.
The bottom line is that wind power is more than twice the cost of coal based electricity and is intrinsically less reliable. Germany has a lot of wind power but its electricity costs are 2.5 times those of Australia.
Alan, true, though its not less ‘reliable’. Its just not base load power. Reliable the way you are using is not true in a technical sense, its just a technical word being twisted for a political purpose. Wind technology is very reliable, and wind speed, though not predictable from moment to moment, can be measured such that the annual output of a wind turbine is know fairly well and the economics thereby calculated. At the end, it is economics that is at stake.
Wind is easier and cheaper to do that nuclear, and is not far off gas – i think that’s going to be the new bottom line.
All very well, but why build them at Taralga? Why not Sydney? If the wind doesn’t blow enough, then just bung in a few more. If you’re going to force them on Taralgans then why not where the power is used?
I’m sure the Taralgans would love to have a thumping big coal mine and power station up the road where all their kids could get good jobs.
Forester
That’s not really an argument Forester. Why don’t we also mine coal where there is not much coal to be found? Why don’t we build a whopping great dam in the desert – if its big enough, it’ll collect enough water. Why don’t Taralgans take a share of traffic and crime like Sydney-siders? And a share of the property prices too.
The govt has the difficult job of weighing up the competing interests of local people and the wider community, just like it does when approving medium density development along rail lines, new high voltage power lines, new oil refineries, coal mines, houses, roads, hospitals, prisons etc etc etc.
PS there are more jobs per kwh in producing wind-electricity than coal-electricity. And jobs/money for Taralga in the tourism from a wind farm too. And lets not forget that the actual landowners will be getting a rental income of (educated guess) $3-$5,000 per turbine on their land.
PPS. I like wind turbines (obviously). I know that plenty of people don’t. I don’t think these people are wrong – its a question of taste. I think its a very thorny issue.
This one is dedicated to you Jennifer: Quoted from Steve…
“Why don’t Taralgans take a share of traffic and crime like Sydney-siders?”
The city/country divide is big isn’t it.
I dream of a future where the city no longer calls the tune and hard working country people regain control of their lives, no longer subject to interference from ‘doctors wives’ and other watermelons.
Forester
Forester, I don’t seriously expect Taralgans to take a share of the traffic. I was being sarcastic to demonstrate how ridiculous your arguments are. I’m sure that is evident to everyone, even you.
The point is that there are individual needs, local needs, regional needs, international needs. We need to take them all into account. Its called living in society.
I don’t see how namecalling casts any light on the difficult questions involved in reconciling these competing needs.
forester – wind power is more expensive than coal however when you take the environmental damage coal does then the costs are more equal.
Here is a table of costs from http://www.southerncompany.com/planetpower/comparative_pop.asp?mnuOpco=soco&mnuType=ppb&mnuItem=oc
New Coal 3.5 3.5
New Gas CC 2.6 2.6
Wind N/A++ 4.7
Solar Thermal 11 11
Photo- voltaic 27 18
Biomass 4-11 4-11
All costs are in US cents/KwHr
Here is another one http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
Nuclear 2.3
Gas-fired CCGT 2.2
Coal pulverised fuel 2.5
Coal fluidised bed 2.6
Onshore wind 3.7
Offshore wind 5.5
These examples are not selected from wind power advocate sites. They do not show that wind is twice as expensive as coal. Wind is actually comparable to coal and gas. Backup power need is reduced with a mixture of solar thermal and wind power sites dispersed geographically. That is it is not still and cloudy everwhere at once.
Steve and Ender can quote all the figures they like, the issue is whether Taralgans, and Taralgans alone, can make decisions about what happens in Taralga.
Forester
Everyone by now knows that wind turbines are inefficient and do not produce very much electricity for the impact they have on the landscape. Taralga is a pretty historical town, listed by the national Trust. 62 turbines, 110m high will be visible from the main st. (That’s as high as the arch of the harbour bridge from sea level).Not some pretty dutch windmill. The majority of the town do not want it.Turbines make a lot of noise. The company will be bulldozing native grasslands and mature forest to erect them. Read the articles recently in The Land!!
forester – just like the people of the Latrobe Valley can decide that they do not want coal mines and brown coal power plants in their valley?? How about if a majority of them decided that they had enough of the mercury and sulphur dioxide and decided to close the coal mines?????? Or the indigenous people that own Rum Jungle etc.
The Taralgans are commiting the NIMBY phenomenon – Not In My Back Yard. Everyone loves electricity however when the issue of generating it is raised it becomes a “Somebody Else’s Problem”.
Some indication of what is dividing the community! Three weeks ago a wind farm forum whas held in Goulburn, when questioned about how many turbines (wind generators) it would take to replace one power station the suggestion was probably quite a few thousand, the other thing to have come out at this meeting was the so called fact that the Southern Tablelands and Southern Highlands had the best potential in NSW for windfarms!!!!!!!! The other fact that emerged was these wind towers ( the ones proposed for Taralga 110 metres high) and 69 of them! Only run at about 30% of their capacity (who knows when the wind blows?) this introduces other problems like when do you turn the power station off? In other words when the wind is generating power, the power station is still running on standby until it is needed.
Apparently also if one of the power station burners get too low and actually go out, they can consume 50000 litres of fuel oil to get it up and running again and they don’t always catch the first time, I was informed by a driver delivering for one of the oil companies supplying this backup fuel.
So what happens during one of these times and the wind has stopped as well!!!!!!!! Bob Carr was seen on TV a couple of weeks ago plugging for nuclear power stations in place of coal or gas and when you look at the world in general and how many of these there are in operation, and succesfully then I think for once he may have made a valid point. I certainly don’t think putting windturbines on every ridgetop is even going to begin to be practical in keeping up with the future demand for this country or the world at large.
Forester, if you want to close the rest of society out of local decision making, why stop at the town level of Taralga? Why not let the individual landowners make decisions about what happens with their own property without interference from the neighbours? What concern is it for landowner B if landowner A decides to rent out their property to host a wind farm?
ENDER,
Coal mine? No, not possible since there is not one around.
John – there is a lot of misinformation about wind turbines.
1. It would not take thousands to replace 1 power station. Newer wind turbines are now 5 to 10 MW so to replace a average 600MW coal power station you would need 60 10 MW ones. As the coal plant is not needed for about 50% of the time as peak demand is about 60% more that the base load the issue of backup rarely comes up. Wind and solar usually follow the peak on average in practice.
2. They do not operate at 30% of their capacity. This is just their load factor. Coal plants are about 80%. Geographically dispersed wind farms will have a higher load factor due to the fact it is not still in all places ie: the wind is blowing somewhere.
3. At the moment the power station are consuming this extra fuel to start up as we have very few quick starting gas turbine power plants. Coal plants are very slow and expensive to start and stop in response to peak demand. Wind turbines would add very little to this.
If you think it is hard to build wind turbines at Taralgan is bad then how about a nice big nuclear power station. I am sure they would prefer a nice pool of nuclear fuel rods cooling just down the road.
Ender. Should you wish to probe the technicalities of power generation, Dr Nicola Tesla the father of electrical generation is a good place to start. In 1898 was lighting 10000 watts of flourecent globe transmitting electricity in the form of a radio wave!! Now who has not developed this technology further and why do we not have it????? I feel the reason we are still fighting over wind,nuclear,or other forms of conventional generation of electricity is because we can’t afford the alternatives. Imagine this world with no need for coal, gas, petrol, diesel and electricity was free who would feed us? So we have a balancing act being performed by the world powers wishing to be seen doing good and in reality keeping the world’s workers employed. Windpower is just another scam in this scheme!!!!!! I for one do not have a problem with properly contained nuclear fuel rods,but who is going to feed all the coal miners? John
The arguments Steve and Ender are putting forward are juvenile and factually wrong. The Taralga wind turbines are at most 1.5mw according to their promoter. Even Wind farm developers say it would take 1000’s of turbines at those mw. “NIMBY” – well its not in Sydney’s backyard so I guess that’s alright. These arguments were put to me a year ago and I am way past that kind of stuff. We are talking about important issues like the protection of landscape, and curtilage of historical sites, protection of endangered and vulneable species, the inefficiency of wind turbines, multinational companies profiting at our expense and non-sustainable use of energy being promoted by these private companies for their own profits.
After a year of studying wind energy, I have come to the realisation that the only people who are in favour of wind energy are those who are uninformed, those who want a warm fuzzy feeling about green energy at someone else’s expense (and without facing up to their own energy use) and those who have a financial interest in windfarms.
Amazing how many ‘experts’ there are out there. Go do some real reading, guys! Your figures are way out. There is real info out there. Go and read it and stop swallowing the windpower-advocates’ propaganda. I can assure you that when your neighbours sign up secretly (up to 3 yrs before you find out)to have turbines built on their places, less than 1 km from your boundary (ie workplace), you quickly become an expert. How comfortable for all you people to expound your theories without the real threat of destruction of your investment, time and ammenity being part of the equation. Call us NIMBYs if it makes you feel good, however we are fighting all windfarms – not just the one proposed to ruin our lives, because we have done enough homework to know that they just don’t work!!! Get some real figures – we have them. Crookwell 1 windfarm operates at just 15% capacity and Blayney at just 20% WHEN THE WIND BLOWS!?!? Do your sums boys. Don’t just believe the propaganda!
Sorry, Forrester. I ment to say that Ender is off the mark. I do agree with your comments. Humble apologies.
Hi, I remain undecided about windfarms at Taralga. I have read all the comments but not the references/links provided by Ender (will get there).
I have the following issues (if anyone is interested)at the moment:
Q1. Am I correct to assume that this is not so much about providing energy to Sydney as it is buying carbon credits as part of the trading system that operates in NSW?
Q2. I am interested in how the carbon credit/carbon trading scheme actually works, (assuming the wind mills are being built so the companies can trade credits)?
Q3. How are companies going to profit from building windmills that are not efficient generators of energy – at least in so much as it costs twice as much in dollar terms to produce the wind energy? (Perhaps this is a component of Q2.)
Q4. Why is Taralga National Heritage listed? How will the windmills affect the listing?
I have more-or-less resolved the following issues for myself/in my own mind:
1. Using the ‘endangered species’,’native grasses’ and ‘mature forest’ argument may wash with others, but not with me, at least not on the information provided.
2. The asthetic argument seems weak, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Some people build rather ‘ugly’ homes etcetera.
3. Some in the town want windfarms, the town seems split 2:1. I am against banning something even if the majority are against it – unless it is toxic etcetera.
PS I grew up near Rum Jungle – at least the first 7 years of my life.
I agree that Ender’s comments on the scale of wind turbines and coal stations is wrong: While you can get 5MW turbines, the average in Australia is more like 1.5-2MW. And a coal fire station would typically consist of four 660MW turbines, giving you almost 2.5GW.
However, I object to being called names by Martha, who offers zero substantive argument. And Glenda is also misrepresenting as follows:
* Yes, Crookwell and Blayney are not the most competitive of windfarms. They were among the very first wind farms built in the country, and were more about demonstrating the technology rather than finding the very best sites to build.
* You keep using the word ‘efficiency’ incorrectly. The term you are after is ‘capacity factor’. A good wind farm (such as the one at Taralga i’m sure) would have a capacity factor of 30-40%. This means that it produces the same amount of power in one year as it would were it operating at its rated capacity for 30-40% of the time. (By the way, because demand is so peaky, your average coal fired power station only operates at capacity about 60-70% of the time, and gas even less!)
You call this ‘inefficient’, but the real measure is the economics. How much does a megawatt hour of wind energy cost?
The answer is about $75/megawatt-hour, about double the cost of coal power. Unlike coal or nuclear though, the costs of windpower are coming down.
The wind farms in Australia are happening not because of the NSW carbon credit scheme, but because of the federal mandatory renewable energy target, which allows wind generators to create renewable energy certificates that are worth about $30/Mwh, and make wind competitive with other forms of generation. That’s how a developer can make a profit. But don’t be fooled into thinking they make a killing. Its a very tough and risky business. Imagine if Taralga is successful in having construction of this wind farm aborted. That represents a big loss for the companies involved. And as i udnerstand it, there are a couple of developers involved with the Taralga wind farm, one of who is a tiny Aussie company of less than ten people. The other is a bigger british multi-national.
Yes, it takes thousands of turbines to equal a coal fired power station. But lets maintain some perspective: Germany is smaller in area than NSW, and has already installed the equivalent amount of power to run all of NSW. Even if there were thousands, its not as though you will see them whereever you look. We have plenty of space and plenty of wind.
IF you have a problem with subsidising renewable energy, then i’m assuming you would also have a problem subsidising nuclear, and don’t really care about global warming. If you do care, then you shouldn’t have any serious technical problem with wind turbines meeting our power needs.
The other big question is the local and visual impact. As we can see here, plenty of people don’t like wind turbines, especially if they are going up next door and you aren’t getting cent of rent or compensation.
I’m not saying we must absolutely have a wind farm at Taralga, but that the various needs at a local and wider level need to be weighed. What a difficult job!!!! A job that is made more difficult by the hysterical (but understandable) obfuscation of people like Martha.
You are trying to hype up this city vs/ country fiction, this shadowy developer vs hardworking honest country folk fiction. This is not how it is. I’m sure your honest hardworking neighbour who is validly trying to supplement his farming income by renting out his land for a windfarm would disagree with your representation.
Some other points to consider:
* Plenty of the people who live in the southern tablelands are ex-Sydney hobby farmers. I would guess that they have more of a problem with wind farms than the farmers who have been their for generations, because they have moved their for the lifestyle. They are also less likely to be the ones hosting a wind farm because their properties are not big enough.
* You don’t own the hillsides. We all do. Or if any individual does, argubly it is the landowner whose property it is.
* there are strict environmental controls over windfarms, governing noise, environmental impact, and visual impact. If the wind farm is innappropriate, it wont go ahead.
I do sincerely hope that the interests of the local community are adequately considered in the decision making process. and i dont envy the people who have to make the decision on whether the wind farm goes ahead. My point in posting here is to refute the erroneous claims about wind generation. Obviously I like wind generation, and care about global warming. And obviously it is easy for me to be like this because i do not live near a wind farm that will be constructed, and have not grown up valuing a country lifestyle in the same way as people from Taralga.
OK so the 10 MW turbines are a way off however 5 MW ones are in production http://www1.enercon.de/en/_home.htm. Enercon have a 4.5 MW wind turbine. It is also a variable speed wind turbine that is vastly quieter and more efficient that the older types.
Although I have demonstrated to be off the mark with turbine size I am reasonably well informed about wind turbines in general and the problems facing us in the future. People who are in favour of wind turbines are not just this way because of a warm fuzzy feeling but a deep concern for the future of the planet. I would like for my children and grandchildren to have a world with stable climate so as they can live the life that we enjoy. How selfish are we going to sound to future generations if the climate does change drastically that we could not even put up with a few wind turbines to help save the planet.
I have seen enough compelling evidence to suggest that the CO2 that we put into the atmosphere is going to cause climate change in the future. ANYTHING we can do helps a little bit. We cannot continue to burn coal to generate our electricity and it must be replaced sooner or later.
Yes you are on the cutting edge of this. The developer of this site is probably installing second hand turbines from Europe. These are available at very low prices because they are obselete. Do not characterise all wind farms like this one. A new one is just been commissioned in Albany and is very successful as is the one in Esperance and Denham over here in WA.
If you were prepared to work with this developer and insist that they install newer, larger, and high efficiency turbines so there would be much less of them then perhaps they would set up an assembly or manufacturing plant in your area providing jobs. This person that is developing this wind farm is probably unscrupulous and after a quick buck however you can turn this around and provide an income stream to counter the decline of the land and keep your young people.
BTW 1358 Mw would be 1358/5 = 271 turbines not thousands – even at at load factor of 30% it is 894 which is just under a thousand not thousands. Also no-one would suggest the solution is all wind – solar thermal plants could be up to 1GW
Swanbank is a typical power station
“Swanbank Power Station is located on a 61 hectare site, nine kilometres outside Ipswich in south-east Queensland. Swanbank consists of two coal-fired installations (one with a capacity of 500 megawatts (MW), the other with 408 MW and two gas turbine generating plants (37MW and 28MW) located on the same site. The first unit at Swanbank ‘A’ produced electricity in 1966 and the final unit in Swanbank ‘B’ was commissioned in 1973. The station was built at a cost of $116 million and its replacement cost today is estimated to be more than $1000 million. Fabric filters to reduce air emissions have been installed in the station’s 10 coal-fired units as part of a major environmental upgrade. A refurbishment and automation program during recent years has ensured that Swanbank will continue to operate into the 21st century.
By October 2002, Swanbank’s capacity will increase by 385 megawatts to a total of 1358MW with the addition of Swanbank E, a combined cycle gas turbine fuelled by coal seam methane. The Swanbank complex will also start generating green energy at Swanbank B by piping methane from an adjacent landfill site in a joint venture called ReOrganic.”
Gee, I completely missed this thread.
To be economic, any powerstation needs a base load, for various physical reasons.
In order to do that it has to operate 24 hours per day, per year.
Wind machines cannot.
End of story.
OK Loius has spoken – better get onto Denmark and de-commission all those wind turbines then.
We also better decomission all those peaking plants as they do not operate 24X7 as well.
Ender, you belittle the situation at Taralga by saying we should be able to put up with a few windtowers but you fail to see the big picture of thousands not just a few. There are an awful lot of wind testing towers throughout this region all requiring a D.A. should you wish to look this up check with Upper lachlan Council as to how many there are in the pipeline! I still can’t get over the fact that the state Government won’t recognise these sites as industrial and treat them as such. I am sure there would not be as many D.A’s if this was the case!!!!! John
Louis – now you are completely wrong in a totally seperate area.
No coal plant has 100% load factor. It is about 90% for the new ones and it drops to 80% as they age. This is time down for maintenance and failures so by your test all coal plants should not be economic.
Coal plants and nuclear plants are really bad at coping with peak demands. The physical design of large rotating machinery with high thermal inertia prevents steam turbines from starting and stopping quickly. These ususally have to be ‘backed up’ with fast reacting diesels or gas turbines that can handle the peaks. So already the fossil fuel plants are backed up with surplus capacity.
Renewables such as wind supply this backup peak capability nicely. Far from needing to be backed up they provide cheap peak power at the right times during the day when the demand is greatest.
Base load for the future can be provided by gas turbines running on hydrogen or methane produced at peak renewable times and stored. Hydrogen can be produced from sunlight and water. Methane can be produced from sunlight water and CO2.
Sorry Loius is is not the end of the story.
Where does the Snowy Mountains hydro scheme fit in all this? Has its electricity generating capacity become too small to be of continued use? If so, should it be decommissioned? Isn’t it a prime example of support for the argument for having peak load capacity able to be turned on to respond to demand? Would it have been built today in view of its environmental impact and potential opposition – Jindabyne was destroyed to create it for example and much wilderness was invaded (like Lake Pedder)?
Isn’t the real key managing runaway community demand – something I think about every time I pass the ‘Gabba and the massive lights are blazing for night football and cricket?!
Graeme, My colleague Alan Moran wrote something about the Snowy with direct relevance to the issues you raise. His opinion piece was published by The Age newpaper on Monday and can also be accessed at the ipa site:
http://www.ipa.org.au/files/news_992.html .
If anyone has been following up on Dr Nicola Tesla they will have seen some amazing things, way before their time. http://www.ucsofa.com appears to be a flow on from this and my only question is what to do with the unemployable leftovers?????
But if you would care to evaluate what is being proposed then the last thing we need is another windfarm anywhere in Australia if not the world!!!!!!! John
Anyone trying to convince you that coal-fired power stations generate ‘cheaper’ electricity than wind turbines hasn’t considered the fact that the operators of coal-fired stations don’t pay for their externalities.
When you consider the cost of removing the air pollutants that coal-fired stations throw up into the atmosphere, electricity from wind turbines is actually cheaper.
If you buy electricity froma coal-fired power station you are contributing to the pollution in our air and you should be charged for it to be removed.
Hi
What is the current state of affairs regarding the windfarms?
I agree with Bobby K, we actually should be thinking of not so much us but for those future generations…our family etc