Windfarms break energy record in Spain

Past three months saw windfarms produce more electricity than any other source for first time, trade body

Over the last three months wind farms produced more electricity than any other power source in Spain for the first time ever, an industry group has said.

The country delivered over six terawatt hours of electricity from wind farms during January, according to data from grid operator Red Electrica de Espana, the Spanish Wind Energy Association said in a statement.

"Since November 1, wind has been the top technology in the electrical system," the group said in a blog posting. "The last time any technology exceeded six terawatt-hours of monthly generation was in 2010, when it was combined-cycle gas turbines."

The performance means wind energy exceeded output from both nuclear and coal-fired power stations and represents more than a quarter of Spain's total power generation.

Spain has been looking to boost its wind power capacity as part of the government's efforts to cut carbon emissions.

The news came in the same week as German wind energy industry association BWE said it expects developers to add between 3GW and 3.5GW of capacity this year, far outstripping the 2.4GW installed in 2012.

The surge in new capacity will be largely driven by new offshore wind farms coming online and will mean the country remains on track to meet its goal of generating around 40 per cent of its electricity form renewables by 2020, up from about 25 per cent currently.

Remember, Spain is not even that windy compared to some places and yet wind turbines produces a quarter of there energy! Proof that the technology is only getting better and it's not a small country either, it's home to 47 million people 

From~http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/04/windfarms-break-energy-record-spain?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

You would need a wind turbine every square mile in order to produce enough electricity to power the Earth.

It is already a significant part of our energy production here in Quebec, along with hydroelectricity (we got the greatest dams in the world). We just announced the closing of the last nuclear central on our territory. We're a really eco-friendly society. 98% of our electricity comes from renewable resources that doesn't damage nature in the long term.

My gf is a PhD student who works on ways to convert energy. Basically her work leads to future solar cell improvements. Anyway I also have a pretty big background in Environmental Physics.

Your options are poor!

First of all the environmental debate is really Solar vs. Nuclear, not Wind. Wind energy is good, don't get me wrong, it's a good renewable source of energy we can harvest now with moderate efficiency. However you can only get so much power from wind, you can't power an entire country with wind (Well except for Australia because they have a lot of land, and live in the southern hemisphere, where wind is stronger and more consistant).

So you should be asking if Solar is a viable alternative. Currently, Fossil Fuel plants run at about 20-30% efficiency or so. Commercially available solar cells already run at 24% efficiency, but they are expensive. 12% efficiency is affordable.

So that's the issue, currently gas/coal power plants are cheaper to produce to return X amount of energy, but in the future that won't be the case.

Nuclear is already more efficient then Gasoline, but a nuclear power plant takes 10-20 years to build, which is too late to counter the effects of global warming.

So the questions are:

Do we make solar power plants and a huge cost? The cost will be reduced if we made a huge investment into solar energy, but it will still cost more then gas.

Do we make Nuclear power plants for the future? Efficient, cheap, but take a while to build.

Do we do what the dutch do and make a coal power plant which tunnels its emissions underground? This removes CO2 from the atmosphere and gives you cheap power. Slightly more expensive then traditional Coal Power Plants, and only available in small sizes (need testing before they devote themselves to making a large plant).

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I think we should put as much money into wind/hydro-electric as we can, and where it's available (NorthEastern USA and Southern Canada are powered largely by Nuclear and Hydro-Electric), and invest in Solar energy where it isn't (It would be cheap to pave a large portion or the Arizona desert in solar cells. Little rain, lots of light, great energy source.

Wind still takes too much energy to build for what you get back.

I favour nuclear fission as a stopgap until nuclear fusion works.

Well to get 6 terawatt hours in a month, assuming running 24hours a day for 30 days @ 100% output is approx 8.33GW generation capacity of wind. Based on efficiency of wind turbines realistically that would be closer to 3x so I am guessing about generation capacity of 25GW (25,000MW)

Now assuming the 8.33GW for each turbine is about 5MW = 1666.666 wind turbines install.

conclusion the DEVIL IS IN SPAIN.

wind will never replace gneration completely as is relies on wind. Once the wind stops or blows too hard the turbines stop to, menaing need spinning reserve on fossile fuel in the event that happens.

The biggest problem with any renewable energy is that you don't control the production. You will always need fallback sources, as the natural gas/coal/petrol/nuclear/hydro let you control the production when wind blows not enough/too much.

I live in the/one of the windiest zones in Spain and possibly all Europe (near Tarifa, strait of Gibraltar) and the windmills are in every place you look at, driving at night is a nightmare because of the blinking obstruction lights, and the green movements say the windmills kill the migrating birds, so not everything related to wind power is as rosy as people say. Furthermore, we have had the biggest increase in electricity cost during the last years of all Europe, with an increase of a 70% during the last 8 years, mostly due to the much bigger cost of production of renewable energy than of non-renewable energy, and we are suffering this huge increase as it kills lots of high-energy consumption industries, something that won't help a country with the economy/unemployment problems that Spain has.

PS: Who says Spain is not a windy country? We don't have hurricanes, but you can't produce energy with winds over a not too high speed, I think over 30 knots the windmills stop. The better places to place a windmill are where wind blows with a mild continuous force, and there are lots of places in Spain with those characteristics.

BUMP.

It saddens me that this thread has not taken off.

It might work. We in Germany have now around 20% of electrical energy produced by renewable resources, the biggest source is wind-energy. But I think it is less than the half of renewable energy, the other important parts are water, biomass and solar.
And yes, germany uses a lot of electrical power, so 20% is not bad.

Well, Kynes and you pretty much nailed it so there isn't any more to say.