Does one megawatt of coal fired electricity = one megawatt of wind powered electricty?

@HoraceGreenley need more speed.

@Iwillwait

@HoraceGreenley I love it

@turbineman40 I drove through the windfarm near my home town. It was very cold out and the windmills were all standing still. Not a blade was turning anywhere in sight. On the horizon I could see a little steam plume. It was the gas fired power plant generating all the electricity the windmills were not generating. A day later the gas plant was shut down when a compressor failed and the plant ran out of gas. Fortunately there was a coal fired generator that was able to pick up the slack. The oldest plant and technology saved the day.

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout Very true. The funny part is the subsidy to the windfarms is going to the same companies that drill for oil and natural gas. They rail against the oil and gas subsidies that don't exist and turn a blind eye to the subsidies to the same companies that branched out into wind energy. Then there is dead bird issues. One oil company was fined millions of dollars when their bird scares failed in a storm and some birds were killed in their trailing ponds. The wind farms are killing thousands of bats and birds every year and there is no penalty attached.

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout Wonder why the green people never mentioned anything about that fact. Oh I forgot how easy it is to go outside to the money tree and pick a few more leaves for taxes. Haha

@hippyjoe1955 I seen a video of a lady dragging 2 giant dead bold eagles with a wing chopped off each in a wind farm..
you’d think that would be ‘symbolic’ enough to end this garbage..

@hippyjoe1955 Not only impacts, it seems. I don't know the source of this information but I gather there have been autopsy reports showing flying animals had been killed by lung injury from the peculiar air-pressure effects just downstream of the blades they have dodged.

@ArishMell I have read similar articles. Not being a veterinarian and having never done an autopsy of any birds found around windmills I can't confirm or deny it. The dead birds I have seen were killed by impact with the blade.

@hippyjoe1955 Oh, I am sure that's happened as well. I think it was bats rather than birds knocked down by embolism in their lungs; but either way it's wild animals being killed by these things.

@hippyjoe1955 Efficiency in engineering terms is simply the ratio of useful output energy to input energy. (Or power, but they are different though related things, of course.)

It is usually expressed as a percentage.

So if a certain generator produces 1kW of electrical power if driven by something of 5kW power - be it a wind, water or steam turbine, or an internal-combustion engine - then its efficiency is

(1 / 5) X 100 = 20%.

Most coal-fired power-stations are of little better than 30% overall efficiency, by the conversion of the coal's potential chemical energy to the alternators' electrical energy. Much of the heat energy from the coal is lost up the chimney, despite some recovery by combustion-air and boiler-water pre-heaters in the flue; while more is absorbed within the entire system by a lot of necessary, heavy, auxiliary machinery. I don't know typical wind-turbine efficiency, but those have a much more direct conversion from input to output; albeit with some power taken by the blade-control mechanism.

In both cases, you also have frictional and air-circulating energy losses inherent in any moving machine, and various electrical-energy losses within the alternator: that energy is lost by having been converted to heat of no practical value, possibly even a problem, to the purpose.

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Now, note that this is a measure of the power in / power out; not of the power alone. If the driving energy drops by a half; the output energy drops to a half, if the efficiency remains constant. I think in practice a big drop like that might reduce the efficiency too by making the losses more significant; but that is a side matter.

So the wind turbine is inherently not less [i]efficient[/i] when the wind drops a bit; it just produces less electricity because it has less wind energy available.

You are of course right that the less the wind power, the less the electrical power, produced; but that is not the same as the efficiency. We still need the base-load generators to cope with the calm days!

@ArishMell That is you definition of efficiency. It is not the only definition of efficiency by any stretch. The fact is that windmills are rather useless things prone to failure and hugely expensive to install and maintain. The CO2 emitted in building a windmill far exceeds any reduction of CO2 one might expect from using one to generate electricity. The fact is that wind will never carry the base load of a modern society. It simply can not be done.

@hippyjoe1955 I am not denying your case. I agree with it. I simply defined "efficiency" in its engineering terms; which is not the same as availability.

It does not really count for much if something is as high, let's say 80% efficient as a machine, if its driving force fails! It's like comparing a car managing 30mpg with one that will return 45mpg, for the same journey, only to find the filling-station at the end of the road has closed down.

Wind-power is mechanically and electrically efficient, but only in its optimum conditions - a steady, fairly stiff breeze - and we do still need something to carry the load when the wind drops.

Cost efficiency is a different matter, and I am not an accountant or economist. Even so, I know wind-farms are costly to build and maintain, but so is any power-station. The wind-turbine is at least comparatively simple, with parts that can be replaced easily (in their own terms), and most of the materials can be salvaged. Not so the blades though, as they usually contain a lot of synthetic-resin based materials that cannot be recovered. Ironically, those are made from petroleum derivatives, as are the protective paints, insulating materials and lubricants.

The cost is even more significant when the turbines are off-shore as many of Britain's are. (The largest are out in the North Sea). Those need huge, specially-built ships to erect them, and maintenance access can only be by boat in reasonably calm conditions. At least the winds at sea tend to be steadier and easier to forecast than over land, in the same weather system. On the other hand the British Isles tend to have their generally-lowest winds in Winter. We do have storms then, I believe some with winds too strong for the turbines to operate properly; but often between long high-pressure calms.

I agree too that simply building more "wind farms" (and covering more arable land with solar arrays) will never be enough; but governments seem not to grasp this. Campaigners certainly don't - most are well-meaning but seem not to realise how the slang meaning of "green" applies to them.

@icedsky

Are these trade secrets that can be sold?

Asking for a friend.

@icedsky What matters is reliability. If you can't rely on the megawatt then you really don't have a functioning electric grid.

@hippyjoe1955 That is true. It isnt all power production. Have to have the rest of your infrastructure reliable.

Earth to @Roundandroundwego Canada doesn't have a second amendment. We don't have a first amendment either. In fact our constitution is a virgin. It has never been amended.