Author Topic: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?  (Read 17016 times)

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divinewind

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How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« on: December 10, 2010, 09:03:09 AM »
Hi guys, just wondering how the cost/benefit ratio breaks down for a DIY wind turbine?

How long until you expect your turbine will have paid for itself (materials only, since it's a labor of love!)

TomW

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2010, 09:40:04 AM »
If you expand the question to "system" then

Never in my lifetime

And it doesn't matter because its more hobby gone out of control than anything like an "investment".

I get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing the KWH use from the grid get steadily lower.

I get an even more warm and fuzzy feeling when the grid power goes out on those rare occasions it does and having the linemen stop up to check if my generator is properly wired because we have lights when nobody else does and we are the last house on a long feed line.  :D ;D

Just from here.

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opo

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2010, 09:54:44 AM »
Welcome to the forum,

My small-down-must-of-the-time-rooftop-mounted wind turbine paid for itself the day the meter said >0 .00A for the first time, I'm not expecting anymore payback from it, of course I still play with it trying to learn more and more about wind generation. I consider it a hobby (one of those you need to read a little, build a little and repeat). But if you live off-grid It may pay for itself as soon as you set it and the first worthwhile wind gust arrives if it is sized properly for your needs. Wind is unreliable in most parts of the world, this is something to consider first (the site), but when it blows sure you can extract some good amounts of energy out of it.

If you are thinking on setting up a wind turbine to satisfy your energy needs or to cut down your electric bill I recommend you take the critical approach of reviewing your electricity consumption: how many KWh per month? where are these KW going? can you cut down your electricity bill by  applying a conservative approach? This is a difficult step. We are used to flip the switch and voila there is light and most of the time we tend to forget to switch it off.

Once you know your monthly consumption  then you can get an idea of the size of the turbine you'll need and the system you should implement. It is very difficult to produce cheaper energy than the energy produced by any power company. A wind turbine needs maintenance, a good site and you need to be able to control it at all times (specially when the wind really blows). Do you have the time to take care of this system?

Do not be discouraged. Read more and then some more. Go to the FAQ section on this board, where there is tons of info (good info) about wind/solar/hydro/etc. electricity generation. It is difficult to produce large amounts of power, that is the reality, but not impossible. You can produce your own (not necessarily cheaply).

How much power do you need?


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snake21

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2010, 10:43:29 AM »
hi,i think it all depend on the size of your turbine and the weather condition you have.if you have a wind speed of about 30-50mph 24/7,then MAYBE one day,maybe after some 15 years.and also,it depends on the cost per kwh you pay.building a wind turbine is fun and you learn a lot from it.i built my small ametek wind turbine and solar system for $500 and everyone was surprised by my skills,even i know i would never be able to repay the initial cost,i know i have learn a lot from it and i feel proud when people come to meet me to get some info about my system. ;D

ChrisOlson

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2010, 01:47:55 PM »
How long until you expect your turbine will have paid for itself (materials only, since it's a labor of love!)

Never.  People who build small wind turbines and fly them to save money on their electric bill got the wrong theory.  At US prices, a 10 footer will make about 32 cents worth of electricity a day on a good wind site.  It'll take you 9 years just to pay for a 1000 amp-hour battery bank at that rate, and then the battery bank will probably have to be replaced after nine years, depending on well you take care of it.
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fabricator

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2010, 06:02:24 PM »
It also depends where you live, the idiots in my county have a defacto residential wind ban in place, if you go by their rules you have to buy a Cadillac system and a free standing monopole tower, if you bought such a system at birth you may get close to paying for it if you live to be 125 years old, and that is only if the system never requires any maintenance or service of any kind.
The powers that be in this screwed up country talk the talk but down here in the trenches where the rubber hits the road it's the same old, same old, stone walling and obstructionism.
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SparWeb

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2010, 08:57:09 PM »
My turbine has already paid for itself!  By powering several buildings away from the house, I don't have to get a contractor to bury a service line from the transformer by the house.  Saved 10,000 dollars.  Hobby project cost 4000 dollars to start.  I have been lavishly spending my nega-dollars every since.

(before you go and take me seriously, please bear in mind that the value of electricity produced by the turbine per year adds up to about 50 dollars.  Since I installed a pair of solar panels, the energy production has gone up 200%, too.  250W of solar beats 1kW of turbine where the winds aren't reliable.  It's all just a labour of love, like it is for everyone else using this site.)
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Ungrounded Lightning Rod

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2010, 09:49:53 PM »
My turbine has already paid for itself!  By powering several buildings away from the house, I don't have to get a contractor to bury a service line from the transformer by the house.  Saved 10,000 dollars.  Hobby project cost 4000 dollars to start.  I have been lavishly spending my nega-dollars every since.

(before you go and take me seriously, please bear in mind that the value of electricity produced by the turbine per year adds up to about 50 dollars.  Since I installed a pair of solar panels, the energy production has gone up 200%, too.  250W of solar beats 1kW of turbine where the winds aren't reliable.  It's all just a labour of love, like it is for everyone else using this site.)


And that's the ONLY way they pay for themselves under normal circumstances:  Replacing the cost of running power to a place that doesn't have it yet.  If you're already grid-tied you need to be "paid off" by other factors:  Fun, good feelings, covering frequent power outages, etc.

To figure costs and payoffs:
 - Obtain the cost of the installation.
 - Obtain the expected life of the installation.
 - Use a mortgage calculator to compute the monthly payment for a mortgage for the installatoin cost over the installation life (or some long enough period, like 30 years, that the delta becomes small).
 - Add in the periodic maintenance costs (mainly periodic replacement of batteries), similarly amortized over their life.  (For instance:  Pull the batteries out of the main mortgage calculation and do a separate one for them, over the battery life.  Small stuff - like oiling, new bearings, can be lumped in with the batteries.)

Now you've got monthly cost.  Divide that by monthly kilowatt hours delivered to your load.  That's your energy cost.  Does it beat the grid?  Does it still beat the grid if you reduced your "mortgage" size by the cost of installing grid power.

Don't forget to do a similar "mortgage payment" calculation and add it to the grid cost-of-power if you're not grid-connected yet.

And be sure to size the RE system big enough for your load and to include a backup fuel-genny in the capital cost for those odd occasions where you MUST have more power than you've got stored and blowing/shining in.

= = = =

As you can see once you've run these numbers, the amortized cost of the installation tends to dominate for renewable energy systems.  Grid power itself tends to be pretty cheap, which almost makes up for the R.E. power itself being "free" except for the cost of the equipment to capture it.  So you're normally only ahead if the cost of the power hookup is greater than, or just under, the cost of the R.E. system, or the R.E. system gives you some other benefit (which may not be financial).
« Last Edit: December 10, 2010, 09:57:31 PM by Ungrounded Lightning Rod »

thirteen

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2010, 11:57:54 PM »
I will not be able to use wind but I will use a combo of MicroHydro and Solar. As for the cost just to get power to my property is around $375,000.oo 7 miles of power lines and then there would be the right of way. I will be totally off any grid until I die. What i see is that it is the idea and pleasure that you get from being independent from the power company. I guarantee that the power prices will double in the coming years. Put a price on having power when others do not and about the time you want a cold beer or a cool glass of milk. Even keeping your food fresh. How much is a hot shower worth or just heat during the winter storm that just took out the power lines.  Just a thought
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divinewind

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2010, 04:40:35 AM »
Thanks for the replies guys - I'm one of those 'way' off grid people, so it's probably still going to be something I'll consider after I've investigated all the other options.

ghurd

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2010, 10:18:54 AM »
You are in the right place.

If it is not windy, it is often sunny.
And if it is available, hydro works 24/7.
All 3?

Every watt is that much a gas genny doesn't have to run.
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oldculett

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2010, 05:25:32 PM »
The first day I hook it up.  In 1995 when I started looking into wind power they wanted $84,000 to put a line in. I have one 10' built now and about 1/2 done with a second one. I have ordered the mags for a 17'. and with about $4000 battery's and $3500 converter. I will have less than $15000 in all. ongoing repair costs will be it.

Oldculett

poco dinero

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #12 on: December 13, 2010, 08:31:22 AM »
This question doesn't have a simple answer.

If a person doesn't own their property yet, they can save thousands of dollars per acre by buying off-grid property.  My 12 acres in southern Utah cost me $28,000 per acre,  I could have (and now wish I had) gone twenty miles down the road and bought similar property for about $4,000 per acre or less.  The difference would have bought a pretty fancy RE system.  Property taxes would have been a lot less too.  And even though the grid power lines go right past my driveway, it still cost me $5,000 to have the power brought from the street to my house, and that doesn't include the $10 a foot they wanted to charge me for digging the trench for the electrical wires.  My wife ended up digging that trench using our backhoe, took her three weeks to dig it because of all the rocks.

Secondly, the payback time for any RE system depends on utility rates.  Mine are cheap now, about $90 a megawatt-hour, but I fully expect them to rise dramatically.  Think cap and trade.  It's coming as soon as the rest of the world starts to believe that global warming really is happening.  Gotta save the polar bears.

Third, FITs are coming.  Those are feed-in tariffs.  Basically FITs require utilities to pay four or five times the going rate for power supplied to the grid by distributed generators (people with wind turbines and/or solar panels).  FITs are revenue neutral to the utility because the cost is passed along to the folks who don't feed any power to the grid.  FITs are already the law of the land in many places, especially in Europe.  Australia and Canada have them;  Gainesville, Florida has them;  California is going after FITs in a big way.  They're coming as soon as the rest of the world wakes up.

I'm a firm believer in FITs because they promote distributed generation of electrical power.  About half of the electrical power generated in a typical coal-fired power plant is lost in transmission lines before it even gets to the ultimate users.  A million homes each supplying a kilowatt of power to the grid would replace one big old stinky coal fired 2,000 megawatt power plant, because with distributed generation the power is consumed very close to where it is generated.  The electrical power that my wind turbines and solar panels generate is likely used by other houses right in my neighborhood.  FITs will greatly reduce the payback period for wind turbines and solar panel installations.

Here's another scenario that greatly impacts the payback period of residential RE installations, at least those with battery back-up.  One of these days the Iranians or some other bunch of terrorist jerks is going to sail a tramp steamer (or a sailboat) into New York harbor and set off a nuke.  The ultimate suicide bomb.  When that, or some similar catastrophe happens, the economy will shut down for at least six months (it almost shut down in September 2008 even without the help of terrorists).  The grid will go down for an extended period of time.  When that sad event happens, the payback time for my RE system is about three days, because that's about how long my freezers will last without electrical power.  I give this a 3% chance of happening in my lifetime.

It bothers me somewhat that so many people are so concerned about the payback time for RE systems.  We don't worry about the payback period for our $44,000 pickup trucks, even though we could drive a compact car and hire somebody to haul all the big stuff for much less than the pickup truck cost.  You have to have a more noble reason than making money to justify an RE system.  How about the fact that every kilowatt-hour of electricity you generate offsets the release of 2.2 pounds of greenhouse gasses?

Quote
Posted on: December 12, 2010, 09:18:54 AMPosted by: ghurd 

If it is not windy, it is often sunny.
And if it is available, hydro works 24/7.
All 3?
 

You don't necessarily need a flowing water source such as a stream or a spring to use hydro.  My place has no stream, but it does have a 400 foot cliff.  I'm building a 40,000 gallon water tank at the top of the cliff, and another one at the bottom.  A 1.5 kw Exmork microhydro will connect the two tanks.   When the sun shines and the wind blows hard, the excess power will be used to pump the water from the lower tank to the upper tank.  When the top tank is full, and the sun isn't shining, and the wind isn't blowing and I need power, the hydro comes on.  Think of the two water tanks as a big, 2,000 amp-hour battery with no lead, never needs to be replaced like batteries do, can be discharged to a 100% DOD without shortening its life, and the top tank will double as a swimming hole in the summer.  Both tanks will serve as an emergency water source when the economy shuts down and the community water system dies.  Need lots of water to keep the plants in the greenhouse alive when the grocery store shelves go bare.

Sorry to end on such a gloomy note, but that's all I have to say about payback time for wind turbines.

poco

DamonHD

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #13 on: December 13, 2010, 09:25:05 AM »
Sorry to quibble, given that I basically agree with you, but transmission AND distribution losses in the UK for example are under 10% in total.  So the 2x multiplier isn't there. On average each kWh not used here saves about a pound (~500g-ish) of CO2 emissions.  I've still put up a lot of PV and I am putting up more, in the hope of making doomsday a tiny bit less likely.

Rgds

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poco dinero

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2010, 07:39:00 PM »
Damon,

Thanks for your input, but I'm inclined to re-quibble with you.

Your transmission losses in the UK are so much smaller than ours in the US because your country is so much smaller, land-mass wise.  In many other ways your country is obviously much larger than ours.  Additionally, the transmission voltages may be different.  I'm reasonably certain of the information that I posted, although my source certainly could have been wrong.  I do need to start remembering and documenting sources.

I only had one source for the data on how much greenhouse gas is emitted per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by coal-fired electrical power plants, and I can't identify that source.  I will keep an eye out for more data.  Possibly that source was in error and I relied again on faulty data.  Sounds about right to me though.  Anybody with better or more data, please chime in here.  Al Gore, where in the hell are you when I need you?  Dinking around with the ladies in Seattle?

poco

SnowGhost

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #15 on: December 13, 2010, 10:33:53 PM »
My research for carbon shows it's about 1ton/MWhour generated, using the dirtiest coal.  Cleaner coal, or gas is of course, cleaner (erm, what a craptacular sentence).

My own payback time, going by a spread sheet i've set up, looks to be about 5 -7 years.  Figureing on an installed cost of $20,000, for a 5kW exmork turbine, 5.5m/s average wind speed and $0.265/kWh.   5000kWh used/year and I should generate somewhere around 10,000kWh/year.  Unfortunately, that is all theoretical (although the only real guess there is the generated output, based on average wind speed).

But even if my figures are 50% over generous, that stil puts pay back in 10 - 14 years, and after that 'free' electricity.  Grid attached, so no batteries.  I'd expect to have to replace the turbine in that time frame, but that is not the most expensive part.  Cable, tower and inverter all cost more than the turbine

taylorp035

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #16 on: December 13, 2010, 11:10:11 PM »
I would guess maybe half that output (5000 kwh).  I think the average speed would have to be much higher and very steady to hit 10 MWh's

ghurd

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2010, 12:44:30 AM »
Not sure where this fits, but here it is.

I don't think the UK guys understand the size of the USA.

England's area is 50,352 square miles.
The Great Lakes are 94,000 square miles.
Lake Superior's area of 31,700 square miles is 2/3rd the size of England.
31 of 50 US states larger than England.

If England was round, the circumference would be 795 miles.
My wife drives about that far every 9 days for an average.
My daughter just left for her honeymoon, and will drive about 900 miles there and back.

I drove from here to well past where my daughter is honeymooning...
and back...
in the same day...
to pick up a couple skids of solar panels for a good price.
Maybe the US highway system may make it seem like the US is smaller than it is.

The US a pretty big place.
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joestue

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #18 on: December 14, 2010, 01:31:06 AM »
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp#electric_rates2

there's other sources on wikipedia too, and the people i've talked to in industry don't disagree with those generalized figures

in some places the systems are efficient enough that they don't even install tap changers to keep the voltage up when the load increases, and it remains within +/-2%
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SparWeb

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #19 on: December 14, 2010, 01:45:37 AM »
The US a pretty big place.

...And then you drive north across the border, eh?  Makes even america look like living cheek-to-jowl.

The province of Alberta is replacing the backbone of its electricity transmission network because it's losing 4% on the "old" system, at a cost of 15 billion dollars.  Since there aren't much more than 2 million Albertans, that's a pretty big cost to spread around!  I would prefer to invest my 7500$ share in energy somewhere else (eg. here at home) but the chances of Alberta having a FIT program are about as high as the chance of the province cancelling the transmission line project. 

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DamonHD

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #20 on: December 14, 2010, 03:53:53 AM »
Sure the US is big, but it's not like you have all your generation on one side and all your consumption on the other, so it's the average length of transmission and distribution between generator and consumer that matters, and I have no particular reason to believe that that's five times the UK figure.  Doesn't make me right of course.

Rgds

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poco dinero

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #21 on: December 14, 2010, 10:05:27 AM »
Quote
Posted on: Today at 02:53:53 AM  Posted by: DamonHD 

Sure the US is big, but it's not like you have all your generation on one side and all your consumption on the other


Yeah, that really is similar to what it is like.

The heavily populated, big money, politically powerful folks on the coasts don't want no stinky, polluting coal-fired power plants in their neighborhoods, so they end up in the less populated, politically impotent parts of the country, mainly the midwest and western states.  As a result, the power literally has to travel thousands of miles from the centralized point of generation to the distributed points of consumption.

Besides, the coal is mined in sparsely populated, politically impotent areas of the country (don't want no stinking coal mine in my backyard either), so if the centralized power plants were located near population centers, the COAL would have to be moved hundreds or thousands of miles, another form of transmission losses.

Even if the electrical power transmission  losses are a fraction of what I originally stated, why put up with ANY losses?  As I said before, the excess power that my wind turbines and solar panels generate is fed onto the grid (right after spinning my meter backwards) and travels only a few hundred feet down the street before it is used by my neighbors.  Losses, if any, are insignificant.

I think that these high transmission losses are a large part of the reason that commercial wind farms and commercial solar farms are having such a hard time making a go of it here in the US.  The best wind and solar areas are very distant from the large population centers, and transmission losses are huge.  A  solar panel that is 13% efficient while it is still in its shipping container suddenly becomes 7 percent efficient when installed on a solar farm in the Nevada desert.  The people who promote and pursue these projects are stuck in the "centralized generation" mode of thinking, and seem to not be able to think outside of the box.

The future of renewable energy in the US is inextricably tied to the concept of distributed generation.  FITs are the only way to make the concept of distributed generation happen.

Come on, guys, please help me promote distributed generation, even if we have to tell a few lies to do it.

poco



joestue

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #22 on: December 14, 2010, 10:51:11 AM »
Quote
Posted on: Today at 02:53:53 AM  Posted by: DamonHD 

Sure the US is big, but it's not like you have all your generation on one side and all your consumption on the other

Even if the electrical power transmission  losses are a fraction of what I originally stated, why put up with ANY losses?  As I said before, the excess power that my wind turbines and solar panels generate is fed onto the grid (right after spinning my meter backwards) and travels only a few hundred feet down the street before it is used by my neighbors.  Losses, if any, are insignificant.

I think that these high transmission losses are a large part of the reason that commercial wind farms and commercial solar farms are having such a hard time making a go of it here in the US.  The best wind and solar areas are very distant from the large population centers, and transmission losses are huge.  A  solar panel that is 13% efficient while it is still in its shipping container suddenly becomes 7 percent efficient when installed on a solar farm in the Nevada desert.  The people who promote and pursue these projects are stuck in the "centralized generation" mode of thinking, and seem to not be able to think outside of the box.

The future of renewable energy in the US is inextricably tied to the concept of distributed generation.  FITs are the only way to make the concept of distributed generation happen.

Come on, guys, please help me promote distributed generation, even if we have to tell a few lies to do it.

poco

no, wind is underutilised is because its not trusted yet, same with solar.
solar cells are cheaper than coal power plants, but they don't work at night.
efficiency figures don't apply to solar cells...
In theory anyone could put up the 3 billion dollars needed to put a 1 gigawatt solar plant in nevada, and one could get 94% of the power to California, that's the easy part.. actually building it costs a lot more, because you would have to find a way to sell that power to everyone else.

the grid is a much more tight, single digit dollars per MWH contracted place than it appears from the customer's 11 cents/kwh bill..
you can't just add a megawatt here and there without expecting costs to go up, which is why they don't want you to be able to use the grid as a "big battery", spinning the meter backwards and storing that power for when ever you need it.

as I said, they don't trust it, they don't want to have to predict the weather tomorrow to estimate how much power they need to move through which transmission line today.


on a side note,
few weeks ago I was reading a piece in the wall street journal last month. think this was in California, but might have been washington, can't remember. Anyway, the utility needs to build another 117 mile high voltage line. they think its going to cost 1.9 billion.
they have already spend 100 million on the environmental part, paying off the right politicians, and some of that 100x10^6$ went toward a 11,000 page environmental impact report.. that no one is going to read.
basically, its stalled because a few "important" people think that the line could be used to sell dirty power, and the only way they even got this far was selling it on the idea that *most* of the power would be from a wind farm...

wait until the economy picks back up again and the electrical demand starts back up at +3%/year, rather than the +1, or +0.5% per year than it is now.. that's going to drive prices up before cap and trade does.
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DamonHD

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #23 on: December 14, 2010, 10:54:49 AM »
PD: I hear what you say, and wholeheartedly agree we should put up LOTS more distributed generation fast, ignoring those who whine that it's expensive, since the expense of not having power at all when FF gets scarce and we're all fighting the newly-inflated competing Asian demand, but I think T&D losses are really just a cost of doing business and will be *higher* in a system with lots of intermittent sources.

Googling for "US transmission and distribution losses" suggest lower numbers than the UK, ie less than 7% total.

We have NIMBYs too, forcing a lot of generation up north while we in the soft south consume like it was going out of fashion.  And nukes end up at the coast of course.  And bug FF generators and other sources of emissions are all well away from population centres now.  (I discovered that we had a power station in our 'leafy' town until quite recently: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kingston_Power_Station,_London and I've walked past where it used to be many times on the way to a pleasant riverside park we visit with the kids.)

Rgds

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WindriderNM

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #24 on: December 17, 2010, 01:13:44 PM »
Mine wind and solar elect. and solar hot water payed for itself in less then 2Yrs. mostly surplus and salvaged parts  9 solar panels 55w to 80w each $50 ea 12 used batteries $18 ea wind: 2 towers 1 made from 4in steel pipe 65ft. tall about $70 1 from 2.5in well pipe 60 ft tall about $90 several generators some homemade some from pmms  bulk hot water heater from parts laying around. 10kw 18hp diesel gen. $75 backup and to run pump every few days to fill water tank on tower.
I get a lot of stuff from gov. surplus auctions.
It is also a lot of fun and we have learned a lot and are still learning. We now check the power usage of anything we buy both turned on and off. It has taught us a lot about conserving power. We now try to recycle everything we can including electrons (Our electrons never leave our property)
 
~~~WindriderNM (Electron Recycler)~~~   
~~~Keep Those Electrons Flowing~~~

Randomthoughts

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Greenhouse gas reductions
« Reply #25 on: December 18, 2010, 01:11:36 PM »
A common misconception I see regarding greenhouse gas reductions is to use dirty coal as the amount being offset. I work in a coal fired power plant, and the last generation reduced is coal. This is because power plants are dispatched according to PRICE, not emissions.  The actual generation most likely to be reduced is Hydro, as it is very quick to react to system load changes, next is Natural gas turbines, also due to it's speed at reacting to changes, as well as it's price. Thermal generation, either coal or nuclear, has a time lag, in that to drop load in normal conditions, the amount of fuel is reduced, then the pressure in the boiler drops, then the steam flow to the turbine drops, then the output from the generator drops. A typical 400MW generator has a 200' tall boiler, that contains thousands of gallons of water. It normally takes 12-16 hours to go from cold to full output, as you have to wait for the thermal expansion of the turbine stator/rotor combination. In contrast, a Hydro dam generator can go from zero to full load as fast as the input valves can open to get the water through. So, between price and speed of reaction, coal is normally the base load, Gas is the choice for peaking loads, and Hydro is used as load control and peaking loads, with some variation due to seasonal water levels. 

DamonHD

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #26 on: December 18, 2010, 01:44:49 PM »
Except that if (base) load is permanently reduced through conservation it will come out of base load generation, for example.

It's certainly complex.

Rgds

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TomW

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #27 on: December 18, 2010, 01:47:03 PM »

It's certainly complex.

Rgds

Damon

As clear as mud to the average consumer.

Just from here.

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Randomthoughts

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #28 on: December 18, 2010, 06:31:59 PM »
Yes it is complex, but for all practical purposes, wind and solar offset natural gas, not coal.

SparWeb

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #29 on: December 18, 2010, 10:41:44 PM »
A typical 400MW generator has a 200' tall boiler, that contains thousands of gallons of water. It normally takes 12-16 hours to go from cold to full output, as you have to wait for the thermal expansion of the turbine stator/rotor combination. In contrast, a Hydro dam generator can go from zero to full load as fast as the input valves can open to get the water through. So, between price and speed of reaction, coal is normally the base load, Gas is the choice for peaking loads, and Hydro is used as load control and peaking loads, with some variation due to seasonal water levels. 

This is actually my main reason for being a supporter of nuclear energy.  Nuke plants can supply the base load for large cities.  I'm aware of the cost being higher than coal plants, but if society acknowledged even a small cost associated with the environmental effects of the coal burning emissions, then they come up even.  It's been made into a boogey-man by the press, but they seem even more un-informed than the general public on these matters.  I don't think it would really be that difficult in fact!  An engineer drank a glass of tritium in front of the media and it made the cover of the newspapers.  More demonstrations like that and people would relax and respond more rationally.  The potential of nuclear energy is HUGE.  And it's being ignored at a time that people are waking up to the fact that the resources they've typically been using for their energy supply are growing short.
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poco dinero

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #30 on: December 19, 2010, 08:42:23 AM »
Quote
Posted on: December 18, 2010, 12:11:36 PM  Posted by: Randomthoughts 

the last generation reduced is coal. This is because power plants are dispatched according to PRICE, not emissions.  The actual generation most likely to be reduced is Hydro, as it is very quick to react to system load changes, next is Natural gas turbines, also due to it's speed at reacting to changes,   

This needs to change, and it would change if we increased the price of emmissions.  I say bring on CAP AND TRADE, then bring on FITs.  Which gets us back to the question originally asked in this thread.  Cap and trade, then FITs would greatly reduce wind turbine payback time.

Quote
Posted on: December 18, 2010, 12:11:36 PM  Posted by: Randomthoughts 

Thermal generation, either coal or nuclear, has a time lag, in that to drop load in normal conditions, the amount of fuel is reduced, then the pressure in the boiler drops, then the steam flow to the turbine drops, then the output from the generator drops. 

The really neat thing about nuclear reactors is their negative temperature characteristic.  If a reactor senses a reduction in demand for the energy it is producing (via a temperature rise in its cooling fluid, usually steam), it just produces less power.  It just sits there and automatically produces exactly the amount of heat energy you suck out of it.  If you suck more, it makes more; if you suck less it makes less.  This happens with no human intervention.  It is this thermodynamic characteristic that allows a nuclear submarine to go from "full speed ahead" to "all stop" power levels, and vice versa,  almost instantly.  There is no change in the control rods, no change in the level of criticality of the  reactor. 

So, as compared to coal-fired plants, the sequence in the above quote is reversed for nuclear plants:  the electrical demand goes down, then the output from the generator drops, then steam flow to the turbine drops, then the pressure and temperature in the steam generator rises, then the reactor senses the temperature rise and puts out less heat energy.

poco

go4it

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #31 on: December 19, 2010, 06:42:01 PM »
I found this site that has a calculator to figure out the payback time on a wind turbine.  You need to have a Canadian postal code.  I used R2J 3K4.

http://www.smallwindenergy.ca/en/SmallWindAndYou/Planning/BallparkCost.html

Ungrounded Lightning Rod

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Re: How long will your turbine take to pay for itself?
« Reply #32 on: December 20, 2010, 06:26:00 PM »
The really neat thing about nuclear reactors is their negative temperature characteristic.

Which is true of some of the good designs, especially recent ones.

Unfortunately, it's not true of all of 'em.  For instance:  Some of the fast breeder reactors had a POSITIVE temperature coefficient.  (That's a thermal runaway waiting to happen if this misfeature continues for a significant range of temperatures, or a control stability issue if it's only true for a narrow range of temperatures that happens to include some part of the normal operating regime.)