Wind turbine farms are an excellent way to the tap the energy of wind, as highlighted by the number of installations in recent years. When you look at raw output wind turbines can’t put out the power modern combustion power stations can. The energy stored in combustion fuels is significant, and as long as these fuels can be obtained at reasonable rates they will outperform the wind power market.
This fact is not as bad as it might seem initially. The truth of the matter is we take for granted all the things in life provided by a solid industrial base. An industrial base including mining, timber, metallurgy and manufacturing of farm equipment to harvest our food supply. This base of heavy industry needs reliable electricity in very big amounts.
Let’s be honest, when we have to produce steel, machine metals, and stamp cars a lot of electricity is required. A large and varied heavy infrastructure like this is hard to power on wind or alternative energy alone. The motive energy and processing is too significant.
Wind turbines do makes sense in a large variety of applications, however. Wind machines are an age old, tried and true, simple way to tap a source of free energy.
It just means that wind turbines are better suited for residential and for small scale commercial applications.
As an example, a 500 MegaWatt power plant can fit in a relatively small space, less than a 1/4 square mile without much difficulty. As a comparison consider a wind power farm of equal capacity. Estimating 2 MegaWatts per turbine would then require over 250 wind turbines be placed in service. Imagine the area this would require!
Keep in mind, also, that a steady supply of Wind is required which is not always the case.
There are excellent locations and conditions for wind power and it should be part of our energy portfolio. But we can not abandon our combustion technologies where efficiencies and pollution controls continue to improve, combustion is the heart of our economy driving our heavy industry.
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