Talk:Renewable energy debate/Archive 1

Article neutrality?
I am a NERC certified system operator in the southeast US, and very much support renewable energy. However, effort needs to be made to present this article in a neutral manner, and put forth factual information. Most information included in it is factual. Some is not - even some quoted material. The article is put forth as if there are no large problems with the most popular renewable resources. I believe these problems need to be put forth so that they can be surmounted. If they are not, we will never have renewable resources on the scale we'd like because the system will not support it.

To use the US as an example, there are three interconnections in the continental US. Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and ERCOT, which is basically Texas. These three Interconnections have no AC ties. There are a few HVDC ties between them, but for the most part they operate without interaction. All bulk power systems in the US, Europe, and Asia are interconnected systems. The PRIMARY goal of Interconnection generating resources is maintaining system frequency. They also support system voltage, but that can be accomplished through other means. Maintaining frequency cannot. The underlying problem with most renewable energy sources (PV solar and wind in particular) is that they cannot assist in maintaining system frequency. Wind generators, in fact, trip off at a preset frequency excursion or excursion rate to prevent damage to the generator. The upshot of this, which is currently being studied in the US by NERC, FERC, and several regional reliability entities, is the degradation of system frequency response due to non-inertial generation.

Generation can be separated into "inertial generation" and "non-inertial generation". All fossil fuel and nuclear generation is inertial because the spinning rotor of a fossil or nuclear generator carries tremendous stored rotational energy, which naturally opposes any sudden change in system frequency (during loss of another generating unit for example). For example, a GE H-System combustion turbine rotor weighs 106 tons and spins 60 times per second. This rotating inertial mass is what maintains system frequency through system disturbances. There are many thousands of generators like this powering your home and business right now. Wind and PV solar are non-inertial generation due to wind turbines carrying extremely little rotational energy, and PV solar having none at all. Some hydro is inertial, some is not. Geothermal and Rankine-cycle solar are generally inertial.

These energy sources do many, many good things, but increasing system reliability is not one of them. The verbiage to the effect that "they're smaller and closer to end-use customers, therefore fewer people will be affected by outages than with a few large generation sources" that I removed is nothing less than patently wrong. Sorry if I sound trite on that, but nothing could be further from the truth.

I'll probably be doing some writing on this subject. At this point I only out-edited

Cheers! Tikayyan (talk) 03:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi and thanks for opening up the discussion on this Talk page. You obviously have a lot of technical knowledge and much of what you have said above in your second and third paragraphs is likely to be relevant to the Intermittent energy source article.


 * This is a C-class article so that means that it could do with some considerable work. Bringing in relevant information which is based on WP:Reliable sources is always welcome. As this is a debate article it is important to capture differing views about renewable energy.


 * There are a number of articles which are related to this one. Have you seen Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security where Amory Lovins explains that most energy utilities and governments are unsuccessfully trying to build high technical reliability into power plants so large that their cost of failure is unacceptable. A resilient energy supply system, on the other hand, consists of numerous, relatively small modules with a low individual cost of failure. A key feature which helps to make these energy sources resilient is that "they are renewable: they harness the energy of sun, wind, water, or farm and forestry wastes, rather than that of depletable fuels." See Brittle Power, Chapter 16, p. 264-266.


 * Elsewhere Lovins points out that all sources of electricity sometimes fail, differing only in how, when, and why. Even giant power plants are intermittent: "they fail unexpectedly in billion-watt chunks, often for long periods". For example in the United States, 132 nuclear plants were built, and 21% were permanently and prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems, while another 27% have at least once completely failed for a year or more. The remaining U.S. nuclear plants produce approximately 90% of their full-time full-load potential, but even they must shut down (on average) for 39 days every 17 months for refueling and maintenance. To cope with such intermittence by nuclear (and centralized fossil-fuelled) power plants, utilities install a “reserve margin” of roughly 15% extra capacity spinning ready for instant use. See Nuclear Power:Climate Fix or Folly, Rocky Mountain Institute, p. 10.
 * -- Johnfos (talk) 06:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Why is there nothing about the costs of renewables as compared to the cost of coal? Coal costs less per megawatt and you even have a graph here on wikipedia of that, and it's clear that cost is part of the debate, so therefore it would make sense that it should be part of the debate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.219.100.218 (talk) 05:24, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Introduction improvements - proposed
Nearly all forms of energy suffer from insufficiency and periodic disruption; Renewable energy sources may be periodically variable for natural reasons, while fossil fuels and nuclear energy may become unavailable due to catastrophic failure, political instability, and other causes. The International Energy Agency has stated that deployment of renewable technologies usually increases the diversity of electricity sources and, through local generation, contributes to the flexibility of the system and its resistance to central shocks.

All energy projects meet with local objections their visual and safety impact. The so-called NIMBY (not in my back yard) response adds years to the construction of nearly all new energy projects. In the USA, the Massachusetts Cape Wind project was delayed for years partly because of aesthetic concerns. However, residents in other areas have been more positive and there are many examples of community wind farm developments. According to a town councilor, the overwhelming majority of locals believe that the Ardrossan Wind Farm in Scotland has enhanced the area.

The market for renewable energy technologies has continued to grow. Climate change concerns, coupled with high oil prices, nuclear accidents and increasing government support, are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. New government spending, regulation and policies helped the industry weather the 2009 economic crisis better than many other sectors.

editing notes: Benjamin Gatti (talk) 03:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Objection: "...are sometimes criticized for being variable..." is an uncited criticism. Someone has to own this criticism. find them and name them, or leave it out. Nuclear power plants are also intermittent, oil prices, pipelines, drillrigs, and countries are "intermittent". A debate is a concentration on differences. If one wants to argue that oil is more regular than wind; we need a harder reference than "some".
 * peak oil is a very specific predictive theory.
 * nuclear accidents has reemerged as a driver of renewable energy.
 * remove incomplete specificity.