I love wind energy, but it has its limitations. Not a baseload generation source. Utilities call it “parasitic generation” since it cannot be relied on as baseload spinning reserves. Every wind power plant must be duplicated by a baseload generation source. If not, it requires 3 times the nameplate output, so 3x the number of generating powerplants of a given nameplate capacity, due to the low capacity factor of wind, PLUS 3 more times the powerplant in the form of batteries, and even then, it is still not 100% reliable after 1 day of calm.
So you need to build 7x the number of powerplants of a given nameplate capacity to even get to 1 day of reliable output.
Primary energy consumption figures always sound so much more fossil fuels dominated than the figures for useful energy
Very different figures because you have to take into account all of the 80% inefficiencies of fuel being lost to heat in the processes before being useful
That’s silly. Fossil fuel power is really a form of wind energy, where the fuel and atmospheric oxygen react to create the wind. Meanwhile heat engines have their thermodynamic version of The Betz Coefficient. While typical AWE wannabes spend a lot of misplaced mental energy discussing fictitious stories of how they will beat the Betz coefficient, the real world keeps spinning as it always has. Every source of energy has an amount of AVAILABLE energy, which is a known taking into account entropy. That has nothing to do with any decisions, except heat engines nave the option to re-use the remaining heat for process heating, building heating, water heating, etc., known as “co-generation”. I’m sure nuclear also “wastes” some radiation, and some heat, since it’s really just another way to boil water Same with solar - most of the energy is not collected, but just heats the panels What you imagine is some God-like overseer keeping score of technicalities such as “technically there is more chemical energy there than you used”, Well there is only the AVAILABLE energy to consider, compared with the AVAILABLE energy from any source, Your above statement is an artifact of biased thinking brought on by “global warming derangement syndrome” combined with "a “hydrocarbons are bad” bias, so you flag the inefficiency of fossil fuels against wind energy pretending the, wind energy is magically 100% efficient. That whole discussion is irrelevant. You know what’s sad is how much writing it takes to debunk every wrong, misguided “statement” made by the endless delusional dreamers. OK this is an edit: I was conflating “capacity factor” and “Betz coefficient”. The capacity factor already ignores the Betz coefficient. if it included the Betz coefficient it would make wind energy look even worse than it is.
I wonder how much the situation would improve if we could develop a system which operates at true high altitude, (1 - 2 Kilometers). In this case the winds are stronger and more consistent.
