Quote from Anaconda:
Read just ONE independent study instead of spouting wind energy industry propaganda.
http://www.undeerc.org/wind/literature/Regional_Wind.pdf
Do me a favor and dispute the data represented in that paper that indicates that a geographically dispersed, commonly connected system of wind farms reduces the variability of production, which translates to a more reliable resource.
You're actually mentioning FPEL, which is really ironic considering what the environmental results were from their wind projects and the lessons they had to learn the hard way.
No, I wasn't referring to FPL specifically. Interesting that the first two links returned for "FPL wind energy environmental impact" seem to indicate positive environmental and economic impact to their wind projects.
I'm open to reading some links of your own that dispute it.
Wind is not very viable on site, it is best suited for isolated areas where the environment is relatively bare and unnaffected.
All green technologies suffer from production variability at a given site. And, that's the point of what I've said; the variability of wind power production is
inversely proportional to the geographic dispersion and interconnection of wind farms.
Which means generation of power that has to be transmitted a long distance.
Here's a list of the 101 cities with the most sunshine,check out the google map in the link:
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c474.html
Now, check out the map for the 101 cities with the lowest average sunshine:
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c475.html
And, the map of the 101 most densely populated areas:
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c544.html
Obviously, the best place for solar thermal is not anywhere's near where most of the population is located, and worse, they're locations that are generally sub-optimal for solar power.
Now, contrast that with the list for the highest average wind speed:
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c467.html
Wind is not nearly as centralized as solar is, they're somewhat closer to the more densely populated areas too.
And, for completeness, here's the list of the lowest average wind areas:
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c468.html
If anything, all of this points to the need for a complimentary and geographically dispersed system of solar
and wind power.
Anyone arguing for one to the exclusion of the other has some sort of axe to grind...
Denmark had quite an experience with this, the wind farms start pumping energy into the grid that sometimes has to travel to nowhere and hence gets dumped at rock bottom rates to its neighbors.
You're absolutely correct, Denmark has production variability issues.
Denmark is also a little over 16MM square miles while the states in the region listed in the paper I linked to cover 296MM square miles.
In other words, Denmark is about 5% of that region.
Dunno, sure looks like Denmark suffers from exactly what that paper concludes -- wind farms in a small area are going to suffer from higher variability in power output then those that are dispersed over a wide geographic area and are interconnected.
