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Uploaded: Tuesday, September 11, 2012, 12:07 PM
Scientists: Wind could meet world power needs by 2030
Stanford, Delaware climate model show there's plenty of wind to meet energy demand
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 | Wind holds enough energy to meet or exceed the world's total demand for power by 2030, according to new research from Stanford University and the University of Delaware.
Four million wind turbines, each 100 meters high, could supply well over half the world's power demand without significant negative effect on climate, said Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and Cristina Archer, associate professor of geography and physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware.
Jacobson and Archer would place half of the 4 million turbines over water. The remaining 2 million would take up a little more than one-half of 1 percent of the earth's land surface -- about half the area of Alaska.
Rather than put all the turbines in a single location, Archer and Jacobson said it would be best and most efficient to spread out wind farms in high-wind sites across the globe -- the Gobi Desert, the American plains and the Sahara, for example.
"We're not saying 'put turbines everywhere,' but we have shown that there is no fundamental barrier to obtaining half or even several times the world's all-purpose power from wind by 2030," Jacobson said.
"The potential is there if we can build enough turbines.
"To get there, however, we have a long way to go. Today we have installed a little over 1 percent of the wind power needed," Jacobson said.
The professors' conclusions come from adaptations of three-dimensional, atmosphere-ocean-land computer modeling, which calculates the theoretical maximum wind power potential on the planet, accounting for wind reduction by turbines.
The model assumed wind turbines could be installed anywhere and everywhere, without regard to societal, environmental, climatic or economic considerations.
The new paper contradicts two earlier studies that said wind potential falls far short of the aggressive goal because each turbine steals too much wind energy from other turbines, and that turbines introduce harmful climate consequences that would negate some of the positive aspects of renewable wind energy.
The new computer model provides a more sophisticated look than previously possible by separating winds in the atmosphere into hypothetical boxes stacked atop and beside one another. Each box has its own wind speed and weather. In their model, Jacobson and Archer exposed individual turbines to winds from several boxes at once, a degree of resolution earlier global models did not match.
"Modeling the climate consequences of wind turbines is complex science," said Jacobson.
"This software allows that level of detail for the first time."
The researchers were able to calculate the exposure of each wind turbine in the model to winds that vary in space and time. Additionally, the model accounts for the wind that gets claimed by the turbines. It then calculates the effect of these wind speed changes on global temperatures, moisture, clouds and climate.
Among the most promising things the researchers learned is that there is a lot of potential in the wind -- hundreds of terawatts. At some point, however, the return on building new turbines would plateau, reaching a level in which no additional energy could be extracted even with the installation of more turbines.
"Each turbine reduces the amount of energy available for others," Archer said. The reduction, however, becomes significant only when large numbers of turbines are installed, many more than would ever be needed.
"And that's the point that was very important for us to find," Archer said.
The researchers have dubbed this point the saturation wind power potential. The saturation potential, they say, is more than 250 terawatts if an army of 100-meter-tall wind turbines were placed across the entire land and water of planet Earth. Alternatively, if they were placed only on land (minus Antarctica) and along the coastal ocean, there is still some 80 terawatts available -- about seven times the total power demand of all civilization. Hypothetical turbines operating in the jet streams 6 miles up in the atmosphere could extract as much as 380 terawatts.
Jacobson and Archer's findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Research funding sources included the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration High-End Computing Program.— Palo Alto Weekly staff Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Tea Party says, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 1:53 pm Tea Party says wind energy sounds too much like Al Gore. Republicans will kill it, no matter how many jobs it creates. Besides, hurting those oil companies is forbidden.
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Posted by Greg, a resident of the Southgate neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 1:59 pm >The model assumed wind turbines could be installed anywhere and everywhere, without regard to societal, environmental, climatic or economic considerations.
With those considerations, imaginie what nuclear power could achieve!
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Posted by Reddy Watt, a resident of the The Greenhouse neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 2:13 pm "imaginie what nuclear power could achieve"
I have. A big steaming pile of... radiation.
Last week, CA's solar plants passed a milestone: 1,000 megawatts during a spare the air day. Did not include rooftop solar production.
Germany continues to lead the way; in May they surpassed 22,000 megawatts:
"Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs."
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Posted by Greg, a resident of the Southgate neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 2:47 pm For a perspective, read James Lovelock, the major domo environmentalist (Gaia theory), who now supports nuclear energy, and opposes wind energy, as the major solution.
Web Link
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Posted by More-From-Stanford--Big-Wind-Or-Hot-Air, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 2:59 pm If the Stanford people believe their own research, then they could put their money where their mouth is--and go open a couple wind farms and how us how it's done. Building mathematical models is a lot different from actually running the businesses that they claim can produce all of this power.
Sadly .. people at places like Stanford can say pretty much anything they want--whether its right, or wrong.
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Posted by Greg, a resident of the Southgate neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 3:02 pm >Sadly .. people at places like Stanford can say pretty much anything they want--whether its right, or wrong.
How true. Remember Paul Ehrlich?
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Posted by Reddy Watt, a resident of the Meadow Park neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 3:18 pm Sadly, sounds like a bunch of the same rhetoric from the flat earthers.
Look back a few years:
"climate change is a hoax"
"it isn't caused by man"
"solar will never work"
"what about nightime?"
Wrong then, wrong now.
Gary will come back with his pseudonyms and tell us about Lovelock's supposed change of heart and all the other deniers, soon enough.
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Posted by More-From-Stanford--Big-Wind-Or-Hot-Air, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 3:38 pm > "climate change is a hoax"
Anyone who has ever taken Geology 101 comes to realize that "climate change" is a natural process that goes on continuously--sometimes driven by subtle forces, and other times, by violent ones--such a massive volcanic activity.
The question on the table is: "Is Man causing climate to change in a way that is outside the parameters of natural change?" For the most part, this question is still in the air--with the exception of the claims of Al Gore, who does not seem to have ever taken a science class.
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Posted by Reddy Watt, a resident of the Meadow Park neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 3:43 pm "For the most part, this question is still in the air"
Keep that head in the sand. You are nice and safe there. No need to worry yourself with reality. Just remember, when you lift your head out, always have your tinfoil hat close by!
As I said: "Sadly, sounds like a bunch of the same rhetoric from the flat earthers."
Web Link
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Posted by Donald, a resident of the South of Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 3:50 pm The important question is NOT: "Is Man causing climate to change in a way that is outside the parameters of natural change?" Natural change has produced some very extreme conditions, but we were not here to have to deal with them. I am sure that the earth itself will survive whatever we throw at it, but the human race might not do so.
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Posted by musical, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Sep 11, 2012 at 6:27 pm "Norbert Allnoch ... said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday..."
Reporters should be warned against using units of gigawatts per hour.
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Posted by Perspective, a resident of the Greater Miranda neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 5:16 am Well, if what the Stanford folks say is true, I recommend they put some money into a wind company and make a fortune. If not...it is like Gore et al screaming about 'rising oceans' while buying beach front property. I don't believe it.
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Posted by More-From-Stanford--Big-Wind-Or-Hot-Air, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 8:32 am > Natural change has produced some very extreme conditions,
> but we were not here to have to deal with them.
True. Certainly the extreme climate changes doing periods of glaciations were very destructive to certain life forms. Moreover, there were events called: “Mass Extinctions” that have come to the attention of geologists during the last few decades, that seem to have been triggered by “natural” events that are of magnitude that we humans would not likely be able to “control” them, or trigger them—via our activities.
These “extreme events” provide one set of “outside parameters” of climate variables. An “inside” set needs to be determined which are not nearly as extreme, and which might be subject to the forces that man might be able to exert against “the environment”.
Glaciations seem to occur often enough, but we are probably so far away from the next on-set of an “ice time” that it’s not worth talking about. Asteroid “hits” are also not some thing that we all can agree are outside man’s influence to cause. We probably will need to put together some sort of “defense” one of these days. However, it’s very possible that man might not be able to stop asteroids above a given size, leaving us vulnerable to future mass extinction events that would probably be brought on by something akin to “global cooling”.
So.. for the near term, we should be trying to link (or prove a lack of linkage) between man’s activities and “climate change” that can not be considered as “extreme”.
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Posted by whole picture, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 11:19 am This is merely (much-needed) hypothetical boundary calculation here, it leaves out the two great challenges of wind power since the wind does not always blow, and is distributed globally without regard to the populace in need of energy: how to move the captured energy to the demand and how to store it for use when the wind dies seasonally or daily.
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Posted by musical, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 9:27 pm While we're on hypothetical boundary calculations, how much would 380 terawatts slow the Earth's rotation?
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Posted by dave , a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Sep 12, 2012 at 10:43 pm A major problem would be moving the energy from, for example, the Gobi Desert to a large, populated area. There is always some transmission line loss e.g. so many percent per X number of miles - maybe the Stanford professors could calculate this. It's a long way from the sites mentioned to here or Europe.
No one has mentioned the number of birds likely to be killed unless the turbines are so designed as to prevent them from running into the blades. I believe there are thousands yearly in the East Bay Hills alone, and that's a small wind farm.
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Posted by Anon., a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 12:44 am Wind is a pretty good idea. If AMBRI/LMB Corporation every gets their liquid batteries working at a large scale wind and solar could be much more effective.
The one thing I noticed is that on the drive down to LA there is location where there are a lot of windmills all of them different sizes and turning at different speeds, and late at night when I was tired it was damn hard to drive through that area because it was so distracting. Then there is the bird killing problem.
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Posted by boundary calculation, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 9:36 am "While we're on hypothetical boundary calculations, how much would 380 terawatts slow the Earth's rotation?"
No worries. Just have Superman do a couple orbits at supersonic speed and it catches up.
Or was it flying backwards and it reverses time?
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Posted by scarystuff, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Sep 13, 2012 at 10:02 am Wind Energy not Wind! Thought it is another global warming warning stuff. Thanks Editor
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