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Comment by strken | Hacker News Reader

Wind has been profitable for years and years even without government handouts, and turbine blades can be feathered if electricity prices are negative. Profitability isn't the issue here.

As I understand it, the real problem is two-fold. Firstly, wind isn't reliable, and if you have too much wind power feeding into your electrical grid but don't have enough storage, the entire grid becomes unreliable. Secondly, wind turbines cost about the same whether they're producing power or not, meaning that they're always feeding power into the grid if the market price is above zero. This takes money away from more reliable power sources - coal, gas, hydro, storage - and can drive them out of business.

That's a more complicated problem than "NYT is a left-wing conspiracy", and it's harder to solve.

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re: "NYT is a left-wing conspiracy"

That's not quite the accusation and while you will likely disagree with the observation, I'd hope for a more fair representation of it.

For those of us across the political aisle (so to speak), the issue with the NYT is that they slant away from conclusions or present a muddled set of facts to discourage reaching a clear conclusion when it would contradict what would be a commonly accepted truth on the left. Or to frame it differently, when there is a narrative violation, the conclusion becomes whispered or is turned upside down. But when there is no narrative violation, then all is clear.

Just as one (justifiably!) rolls one's eyes at a certain network's claim of "Fair and balanced", some of us also roll our eyes at the old grey lady and her "newspaper of record" aura. Not as often, but it is a problem for the NYT too.

> Secondly, wind turbines cost about the same whether they're producing power or not, meaning that they're always feeding power into the grid if the market price is above zero. This takes money away from more reliable power sources - coal, gas, hydro, storage - and can drive them out of business.

This seems like something a futures market should be able to cover?

Ie there are consumers that need reliable power, and there are reliable power sources. They should be able to come to an agreement, despite cheap but unreliable spot sources in the market?

Electricity is complicated. Once a power plant is online, it outputs to the grid and there must be matching demand using it. Running a grid is about balancing supply with demand. Then wind starts blowing and you have unpredictable oversupply and nowhere to put it - or vice versa.

The trouble is that you can’t just plug a “reliable power plant” in or off the grid. It takes hours (that’s “quick” here) or days to power on/off.

You need batteries to cope (e.g. hydro power plants) and there’s not enough of them now.

Yes, the technical site is complicated. That only underscores the need for proper financial technology to match.

A quick Google search for 'electricity futures' reveals quite a few hits. So this is already a thing.

>Wind has been profitable for years and years even without government handouts

Please cite your credible source saying that wind energy is currently profitable in practice without subsidies in more than a tiny fraction of areas on earth.

Nice double standard there. You're allowed to make claims without presenting evidence, but when someone else does, you attack them for not providing sources?

A quick google for "unsubsidized wind power profitability" turned up a bunch of interesting things, though I didn't delve too deeply into any of them.

I can find plenty of sources saying that it isn’t profitable (there are too many to list here). I did look after reading his comment and found exactly 0 credible sources showing that it is currently profitable without subsidies today, and I looked again after reading your comment and still found nothing even when using the exact search you suggested. In fact the entire SERP for the one you suggested, with the exception of one article that suggests that offshore wind power might soon be profitable, has links to articles essentially saying that wind power is economically doomed.

Am I (along with the rest of the world, who would be dancing in the streets, dedicating trillions of dollars to deploying wind towers in every corner of the earth at this very moment, and writing thousands of credible articles about how the world’s energy problems have been solved if this were true) missing something?

Edit: the green folks are coming in and downvoting these comments like crazy. Could one of you please justify your downvote by replying with a link to a credible article that shows wind energy to be profitable without subsidies in non-exceptional places? I think everyone would love to see it, including myself! Google doesn’t seem to know about this very special, world-changing article. Perhaps it is protected with an overly aggressive robots.txt.

I'm sorry you are getting downvoted, maybe it is because of your tone, but coming from someone with an impartial and uneducated view about the subject, it seems like you made a pretty good point.

Believe it or not, I am impartial in this area as well and in fact would love to see renewable energy sources rolled out broadly if and when they are economically competitive with traditional sources. This article just struck a nerve with me because I hate seeing political propaganda masquerading as legitimate news, on either side of the aisle. They have an agenda, and are pushing it with misleading articles (as the parent comment I initially replied to pointed out). They are insulting the intelligence of everyone that reads it.

Article is in Danish: https://ing.dk/blog/nye-normal-uden-spoergsmaalstegn-209443

I don’t speak Danish, and the Google translation isn’t that great, but when I said credible, a random Danish blog wasn’t really what I was referring to. I was talking about something in a major publication.

Economically competitive wind power would be an earth shattering development. If it exists, there would be articles about it everywhere. Everyone on HN would be getting jobs at wind farm startups, and trillions of investment would be pouring in. Venture capitalists would be walking the streets to find wind farm entrepreneurs that have hidden their contact info because of the overwhelming number of term sheets being thrown at them. Bakeries throughout the Valley would be offering turbine-shaped gluten-free cupcakes to VC’s, who would include them with their hand-delivered term sheets in hopes that theirs gets a little bit of extra attention from picky entrepreneurs.

I want it to exist too, I just see no evidence that it does.

Does it really need to be profitable on it’s own though?

Renewable energy has a lot less external costs, i.e. negative effects such as global warming, pollution, etc. On a national or global scale, these costs should be accounted for in any study comparing economical competitiveness. Just looking at the balance sheets of energy companies and their costs vs. income is a bit short-sighted.

> Does it really need to be profitable on it’s own though?

If it’s unprofitable it needs to be subsidised. That’s not bad per se. But you can’t run around arguing it’s profitable when it doesn’t appear to be.

Read the link. It contains more than enough hard info for anyone with a real interest in the subject to look up a few things and become a whole lot wiser. Also, he's not a total rando; he is a wind power pioneer and was the CTO of Siemens Wind Power until 2014. Look him up at Wikipedia - there's an article in English.

https://natgrp.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/india-renewables-...

"We therefore note that wind is now cost competitive with new coal-based generation capacity."

Your article [1] mentions lots of subsidies:

“Over the past 12 months, across key wind states, except Karnataka, the wind tariff has been raised

...

Generation Based Incentive (GBI) restored: In its FY2014 (April 2013-March 2014) budget the GoI reintroduced GBI for wind power.

...

During the past 12 months, we have seen various states announcing their wind and/or solar installation targets (refer to table 3).

...

The GoI has committed to providing low interest- bearing funds from the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF) for five years to the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), the nodal agency providing debt finance to renewable projects in India.“

[1] https://natgrp.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/india-renewables-...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/for-the-first-time...

If these projects actually come to fruition and achieve their target costs, that would be amazing. However, it appears that they are not yet online, and so nobody knows if they will actually achieve the costs they think they will. So far in this field, projections have not met up with reality.

If they bid for this work that is all they will be paid for the energy. So if they fail it is their own loss

That’s not the same thing as being profitable now is it. Power companies go over budget all the time on builds.

Many of these people are the same ones who believe Tesla can build profitable $35,000 cars because the CEO said so, despite evidence of billions in losses (and subsidies).

In Texas, it most definitely is profitable and businesses are dedicating billions of dollars to building wind power. Unsubsidized costs for wind in Texas are currently $32-62/MWH vs. coal at $60-143[1]. Texas is hardly an environmentalist mecca, just a place with good wind and lots of cheap, open land to build wind farms.

[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2017/10/13/texas-...

It's not a double standard. If you make a claim, you have to provide proof for it. As it now stands, the Energiewende is going to cost one to two trillion dollar in subsidy [1] And that is with a 80m population, so in USA terms the equivalent would be $4-8 trillion. Why would that be the case, if wind energy is so cheap? Are all costs factored in?

[1] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/technikwissenschaften-...

Unfortunately, I can't give you my source, as it's from a friend who worked at one of the turbine manufacturers and had to work on forecasts for various political scenarios, and I don't think they released any of the data to the public.

I know this isn't a satisfying answer, but hopefully the changes in the EU will provide a real-life example before too long.

You wrote

> Wind has been profitable for years and years even without government handouts

which does not match with

> Unfortunately, I can't give you my source, as it's from a friend who worked at one of the turbine manufacturers

I'd say you wouldn't have to rely on an unnamable source if it were profitable for years.

Wind energy seems to be actually one of the most economically viable platforms for alternative energy, and beats even some traditional sources even without subsidies, according to this study by the financial services firm Lazard: https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of...

Wind energy is not viable everywhere, but in places with no NIMBY concerns, lots of rural land, and lots of wind, wind energy is perfect. Much of the US plains (especially the closer you get to the Rockies) fits this category for instance. Iowa, not exactly a mecca of environmentalism, is 35% powered by wind now; this is estimated to rise to 40% by 2020. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa)

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