A lot less than they create? Like, if it was a negative return on investment, energy wise, no one would be building wind farms.
Wind turbines produce whole integer MW, which is way more than they cost to make.
Wind turbines produce whole integer MW, which is way more than they cost to make.
Unfortunately, cost does not track emissions that closely. People do all sorts of things that cause emissions all the time, and usually their choice is dictated by which option is lowest cost.
I don't think it's this simple considering politics is usually involved.
But if it was a simple profit question I still don't think people would be building wind farms.
Wind farms appear as ridiculous as they are. Yet... they keep getting built because there's government money to be made. There's government money to be made because they give the appearance of "doing something, anything" while in fact doing almost nothing. Follow the votes...
The obvious answer has been staring us in the face for decades. Yet... underinformed electorate continues to be unrationally scared, making it politically infeasible.
We could have been 100% "green" energy decades ago. Let that sink in... follow the votes.
Erecting more and more wind farms to make you feel fuzzy at night is absurd. We have the solution - metaphoric you just doesn't want it because reasons.
Decades of fearmongering and NIMBYISM have created an artificial environment.
Besides, even if you could wave a magic wand and delete such costs, like the Chinese government can with their top down control of planning and media, it's still worse, as their revealed preferences demonstrate with their acceleration of renewables build-out and slowdown of nuclear build-out.
At least alternative energy has less NIMBY people and more willing to take a shot at it.
Because nuclear will never happen for the exact reasons you stated, but if people think it's a viable option and argue for it, it can be used to delay renewable transition, so that legacy Oil and Gas based producers can reap their insane revenue for an extra few years. It's literally just a delaying tactic.
If nuclear was even remotely economically viable, it would be part of a robust future energy mix. People abandon nuclear because it's not worth the effort when you can literally place a glass panel in unused land and get 1 KW/m^2 for 20 years with minimal intervention. Nobody would have to "vouche" for nuclear if it was economically meaningful. Look at Texas; Politically and economically, you would expect it to be very against renewables, as Texas has always been a fuel behemoth, with significant amounts of it's political establishment literally being oil barons, and now with using wind turbines being """woke"""
But they are still building out wind energy like no tomorrow, because it's so goddamned cheap and profitable.
Texas power has gone negative, CA has dropped to zero. That means power flowing on to the grid either has no where to go or is only being charged transmission fees (and those in CA are gonna be excessive).
Transmission and storage are big issues. But they are solvable ones. Storage can be localize and the grid can be upgraded (and needs to be).
Candidly we need to look for ways to decouple energy creation, storage and transmission from each other. How do I buy enoung fractional shares in creation and storage so I only have to pay the cost of transmission? How do I make my utility into an asset!
It's incredibly unreliable for biggest state in the union. But... we can sure pick a couple ultra-rare events and say "see, wind works" when it in fact does not.
We haven't had a rolling blackout since the early 2000 and Enron.
What we do have is decades of PGE not doing any work to maintain or upgrade their grid. Our power company is so incompetent it has a death toll.
Texas gets something like 24 percent of its power from wind. IT has now updated its rules to force all renewables to be ride through sources (this will add cost but it isnt going to slow things down).
Go take a deep dive into the numbers, you might be shocked at what you find.
https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2....
What do you mean by this? My country is mostly powered by wind.
You cannot build a reliable grid based on wind. It requires other non-temperamental energy sources to be available when the wind isn't blowing. Solar? What if it's an overcast day?
If you look at that chart - you'll notice Nuclear takes over the heavy lifting when necessary. So... why not just have a couple more nuclear plants and forgo the unreliable sources?
Using wind and/or solar does not automagically make your system better or more green. People have pigeon-holed themselves into a reality where only wind and solar are acceptable... and then we hide away the actual sources that provide the necessary backfill.
It has to be massive. There is no other way to manage a 70% production swing in as short as a couple minutes and not have the grid go dark. Which then begs the question of how green the batteries are over decades.
We've picked the least reliable energy source and intellectually anchored ourselves to it - then we don't talk about how we actually keep the lights on 24/7. It's kind of nuts.
What 'sheer volume'? You didn't give any numbers or sources.
Here is some actual information:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/renewables-and-wind-power-...
" In 2022, almost 28 TWh of zero carbon electricity was generated by renewable wind in Scotland, representing 35% of all wind generation in the UK. This could power the equivalent of approximately:
a. 10 million households - over a third of the total households in the UK. b. 85% of total Scottish annual electricity demand."
It requires other non-temperamental energy sources to be available when the wind isn't blowing. Solar? What if it's an overcast day?
Good thing the entire UK is on a shared grid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)
Using wind and/or solar does not automagically make your system better or more green.
Why not?
People have pigeon-holed themselves into a reality where only wind and solar are acceptable...
Says who?
and then we hide away the actual sources that provide the necessary backfill.
What does this mean? People are happy that there are economically viable and scalable sources of electricity that don't burn oil and gas. Who is 'hiding' anything away?
The powers that be are hiding our most renewable resource - ourselves. We just someone to make a tiktok dance out of jumping into the bioreactor and then we won't need any evil wind turbines or PVs anymore.
Nothing is sadder than driving past locked off wind turbines that could be turning and generating green LPG or something, rather than being paid to stand idle.
Raw energy it's 130,000 barrels per day. But available energy it's around 350,000 per day. Britain's share of the North Sea oil is something like 1 million barrels/day. Excluding nat gas. That's down from 3 million/day 25 years ago. Notable oil production will continue to decline but wind energy will not.
I also calculated energy in watts per person and it's 130W/person.
That right there is irony.
Arguably the main problem is that countries take a natural monopoly and then try and treat it like a market. When a well run state company could invest with more certainty.
Sometimes I loose faith in humanity.
For example, if one wanted to maximize profits, energy wise, there are better options than wind turbines and batteries. The choice to go with wind seems politically motivated due to optics of the alternatives.
(I realise that profit in $ might differ in that the wind doesn’t blow on demand while eg gas might - but even then businesses will spring up to fill every profitable niche).
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/...
So the natural gas facility is not generating very much most of the year, but still needs quite a bit of people with the expertise to keep it operational despite that in addition to land lease costs, equipment maintenance etc. Does LCOE turn the cost of the natural gas facility cost into $0 during those situations to be fair?
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Edit: Just glanced at the Wikipedia article and the variables involved in the LCOE equation. Seems to unfairly benefit wind and solar.
"One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE is that it may not control for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand."
"In particular, if the costs of matching grid energy storage are not included in projects for variable renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, they may produce electricity when it is not needed in the grid without storage. The value of this electricity may be lower than if it was produced at another time, or even negative."