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In the US, a number of major milestones occurred on the electric grid in 2016, almost all of them involving wind power. Now the Energy Information Administration is confirming that's because of a big overall trend: wind power is now the largest source of renewable energy generating capacity, passing hydroelectric power in 2016. And since the two sources produce electricity at nearly the same rate, we'll soon see wind surpass hydro in terms of electricity produced.
Wind power capacity has been growing at an astonishing pace (as shown in the graph above), and 2016 was no exception. As companies rushed to take advantage of tax incentives for renewable power, the US saw 8.7 Gigawatts of new wind capacity installed in 2016. That's the most since 2012, the last time tax incentives were scheduled to expire. This has pushed the US' total wind capacity to over 81 GW, edging it past hydroelectric, which has remained relatively stable at roughly 80 GW.
Note that this is only capacity; since generators can't be run non-stop, they only generate a fraction of the electricity that their capacity suggests is possible. That fraction, called a capacity factor, has been in the area of 34 percent for US wind, lower than most traditional sources of electricity. But hydropower's capacity factor isn't that much better, typically sitting at 37-38 percent. As a result, wind won't need to grow much to consistently exceed hydro.
The graphic in the article aptly illustrates the dramatically different growth curves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:44PM (2 children)
for the cost of maintenance alone
Which let us note is a significant cost.
If the shale oil subsidies/markets crash, you have wells which might produce for at best three years if maintained, and some of that income needs to be saved to deal with the aftermath: water/soil pollution cleanup and scraps of metal.
And how is that different than your outcome for windmills? Both need cleanup when they're done.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday March 08 2017, @07:01PM (1 child)
> > cost of maintenance alone
> Which let us note is a significant cost.
Indeed, but wind is getting cost-competitive when including amortization of initial cost, so future maintenance alone will not make the price go up significantly, and the fuel is free.
> And how is that different than your outcome for windmills? Both need cleanup when they're done.
If you don't maintain a broken windmill, it's only a danger for those downwind. Finding people willing to cut it down and pay themselves on the parts and metal is pretty easy.
Meanwhile, there are lots and lots of old shutdown rusting oil well in the US, often with some liquid storage nearby for the spills or fracking fluids. Cleaning that up is an unprofitable mess, as illustrated by how nobody seems to be in a rush to be the king of that business.
The point was also that the shale oil/gas boom gave us a renewal of SUV and other bad cheap-oil habits, which have a longer life than the wells themselves (fracking well have a short life). Windmills produce clean electricity for a few decades after you decide to stop building new ones.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday March 09 2017, @05:41PM
The point was also that the shale oil/gas boom gave us a renewal of SUV and other bad cheap-oil habits, which have a longer life than the wells themselves (fracking well have a short life). Windmills produce clean electricity for a few decades after you decide to stop building new ones.
It's only because you perceive it as a bad habit. The people buying SUVs and otherwise employing cheap oil (which let us note is cheap!) habits perceive things differently. The only real problem are the externalities of oil use as pollution and a greenhouse gas contributor. We can address the former by better pollution controls on vehicles (and yes, perhaps a higher tax on gasoline) and the latter is unfortunately considerably exaggerated. There isn't any real need to change human behavior.
On that last point, I should note that I really dislike laws aimed merely at changing behavior. Sure, we want laws to discourage people from murder, theft, assault, rape, etc. But discouraging people from buying SUVs is a different quality of meddling. The problems that are supposed to be solved are often quite petty.
And unintended consequences are common. For example, SUVs exist in the first place because US automobile companies switched from building station wagons, which were bringing down the gas mileage average of their car fleets to a similar vehicle on a light truck chassis which wasn't subject to clueless gas mileage regulations. Bulking it out as an SUV, was a natural next step.
This often leads to multiple iterations of behavior modification as the unintended consequences and failures of the previous iteration lead to the next round of attempts. Attempts to root out discrimination and sexual crimes on college campuses have over the decades led to some creepy Orwellian stuff on campuses today. Similar things for student loans which not only has resulted in a ridiculous inflation of college expenses and the dubious distinction of student loans being the only sort of non-dischargeable debt that one can possess today.