News archive – January to December 2006

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In this section:

• More Puff than Power (August 2006)
• Nemmco confirms: wind energy "displaces other forms of low-impact energy" (August 2006)
• What is the MRET? (June 2006)
• States reject national code for wind energy installations (June 2006)
• What's really driving the wind rush? (May 2006)
• Discussion paper for a National Code for Wind Farms released for comment (May 2006)
• Wind-turbine fire at South Australian Wind Plant (February 2006)

See also: News archive – July to December 2005

10 August 2006

More Puff than Power

In a well-researched opinion piece published in The Age, senior journalist Geoff Strong writes that we need renewable energy sources, but the answer is not wind energy.

He writes that intermittent power sources like wind energy do not live up to the claims of "saving" greenhouse emissions since baseload generation, such as coal and gas, are kept running to stablise the power grid.

Here is the full article, or read it on The Age website complete with the cartoon by John Spooner (external link):

More Puff than Power
by Geoff Strong
Published in The Age, 10 August 2006.

We need renewable energy sources, but the answer's not blowin' in the wind, writes Geoff Strong.

SINCE Europeans began squeezing out Australia's riches, a magic-pudding mythology has wormed into our folklore. It's part of a fantasy that the land and its resources are endless and infinite. As Norman Lindsay's storybook character says, "the more ya eats, the more ya gets".

It probably explains how we are lulled by some of the claims of alternative energy. How often do we hear the mantra, particularly from politicians, "clean, green and totally renewable"?

Well maybe, but first read the fine print.

Wind farms are now the renewable energy source of choice, largely because they are a tested off-the-shelf technology that generates electricity. They are particularly attractive to big investors, such as union superannuation funds wanting to demonstrate that their investments are ethical.

Also they appeal to astute merchant banks that detect a public willing to pay more for an energy source they believe helps the environment, particularly with rules guaranteeing that any power generated will be bought.

For politicians, turbines are big and visible — tangible proof to a worried public that something is being done about human-induced global warming, a problem few people fully understand. Thus Victoria recently announced a wind industry free kick with a new policy to increase the number in the state.

Equally few people seem to understand electricity generation and the grid that distributes it. Some think power is stored in a giant battery down in the Latrobe Valley. Others (including some cabinet ministers), seem to think the system is like a lake into which energy produced can just be poured. In reality, it is more like the vascular system of an animal: inputs and pulse must be carefully regulated or things will go wrong.

Electric energy is one of the foundations of the civilisation we probably take for granted. In Australia, the economy underpinning that civilisation relies on electricity being fairly cheap. We have little else, such as low wages, to keep industries like manufacturing here. What sort of an economy would we have with Chinese rates of pay?

But do technologies such as wind really work and answer our clean energy needs? A decade ago, I was one of the wind-farm faithful, but after closer examination I have become an apostate. Global warming is real and the biggest threat to our planet and species. My main concern about wind farms is that they lull many into thinking something effective is being done, when I suspect it is not.

For starters, wind farms generate for only about 20 to 30 per cent of the time and it is only by chance that any power is generated when it is needed. Take the recent experience of the merchant bank spin-off Babcock and Brown Wind Partners. With 19 wind farms on three continents, the company has faced a $10 million profit downgrade because the recent heatwave in Spain and Germany led to "still wind". In other words, it did not blow when consumers wanted air-conditioning.

Australia's electricity supply on our east coast is managed by the National Electricity Market Management Company. It is charged with meeting demand with supply at the most economical price. In any power system, electricity comes from two forms, baseload and peak. The first are the big power stations that produce bulk electricity — in our state from brown coal, while nuclear power is touted as a greenhouse-friendly alternative.

Peak power usually comes from hydro or gas — more expensive, more environmentally friendly but able to be stopped and started according to demand.

Where does wind come in? In a sense it doesn't, because NEMMCO does not count it as power generation, because it can't be called up like other forms. Rather, it is classified as a drop in demand. As well, wind does not normally displace coal power, it displaces the more environmentally sound but expensive generators such as hydro-electricity and gas.

In addition, because of its unreliability wind has to be backed up to 90 per cent of its claimed capacity by other forms of generators. Also, the output is relatively low per dollar spent. The State Government has a report it won't release that sources have said confirms this.

Victoria's biggest power station, Loy Yang A, produces 2000 megawatts. The average wind turbine produces about one megawatt in ideal wind conditions. Imagine the area of the state that would need to be covered in turbines to replace the 6395 megawatts we get from coal. Don't forget to back it up about 90 per cent for reliability.

There are, however, alternative energies with baseload prospects such as using steam from underground hot rocks to power generators. Another intriguing project is the 500-megawatt solar tower, proposed for near Mildura, where a huge greenhouse would generate hot air to be sucked up a 500-metre- high tube, turning embedded wind turbines. The company behind it, EnviroMission, claims this also offers the renewable holy grail of being able to store energy, in this case in the heated ground.

While hard reality means clean energy might not be blowing in the wind, it might well be in the updraft.

5 August 2006

Nemmco confirms: wind energy "displaces other forms of low-impact energy"

An article published in The Age claims that despite the Victorian government's enthusiasm for industrial wind turbines, there is growing evidence that wind power will have little impact on the greenhouse crisis.

According to NEMMCO, the body responsible for allocating Australia's east-coast electricity, the result of adding more wind to the grid is that wind energy, rather than reducing the state's reliance on coal by adding to the total "green" power in the grid, instead displaces other forms of low-impact energy such as hydro and gas. Coal-fired power generation will be the last to be displaced.

You can read the full article here, or visit The Age website and scroll down the page to read the article (external link):

Air power will only blow hot and cold as state seeks grid boost
By Liz Minchin
Published in The Age, 5 August 2006

WHILE a stick-figure army of windmills is set to invade the landscape thanks to the State Government's new renewable energy policy, there is growing evidence that wind power will have little impact on the greenhouse crisis.

The problem, according to critics, stems partly from the erratic nature of wind, and partly from the political and economic realities of an energy market ever-hungry for economical power.

The result, according to the body responsible for allocating Australia's east-coast electricity, is that wind energy, rather than reducing the state's reliance on coal by adding to the total "green" power in the grid, instead displaces other forms of low-impact energy.

A spokesman for the National Electricity Market Management Company has confirmed that greenhouse-friendly power sources such as gas and hydro are likely to be the first to be shut down when wind energy enters the grid. The last to be displaced is brown coal, the worst for the environment but also the cheapest.

This and other revelations mean authorities both in Australia and overseas are questioning whether wind power is an effective source of reliable energy or largely environmental spin.

Even if Victoria succeeds in its goal of 10 per cent renewable energy (mainly wind) by 2016, the impact on greenhouse emissions is likely to be less than expectations.

Germany, for example, has one of the highest proportions of wind energy in the world and a report last year by grid operator E.ON Netz made the following warning: "Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent … traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90 per cent of the installed wind power must be permanently on line to guarantee power supply at all times."

To start with, wind can only be guaranteed to supply 10 per cent of its stated capacity when needed. When a new wind farm is announced, claiming it can provide electricity to 50,000 homes, it only supplies that power in ideal conditions when the wind is neither too weak nor too strong. Overall, it can be relied on to produce power for 5000 homes, while back-up power must be available for the remaining 45,000.

Critics argue that wind's attraction for politicians is its visible presence to a public worried about the environment, but largely ignorant of electricity demand, how it is generated and distributed, and its impact on the economy.

The problem is compounded by Australian industry's reliance on cheap power. No one disputes that wind power is currently expensive — about $75 a megawatt hour — while traditional staple brown coal is at $35. But it can be reasonably argued that if the true long-term environmental and social costs of coal generation were included in bills, we would be paying two to three times as much as now.

But despite the State Government's intentions, several factors diminish wind's ability to deliver its promised greenhouse gas reductions.

First, wind farms reliably produce between 20 and 30 per cent of what is called installed capacity, meaning a wind farm capable of producing 100 megawatts will end up pumping out 20 to 30 megawatts over a given time. But it might not be pumping this out when there is much demand. That is why the 90 per cent back-up is needed.

Also, because wind is erratic — and because the energy cannot be stored — the Government wants to harness as much as possible when it is available. This means wind power has priority over other electricity generation. During normal to low demand, other generators will be closed down or their power sold cheaper. The first to go will be gas and hydro, They are the next-most-expensive to wind, but they are also relatively greenhouse friendly, so wind displaces generator forms that are already causing lower greenhouse harm.

The last to be displaced is likely to be the cheapest but the worst polluter, brown coal. It provides baseload of up to 90 per cent of the state's power. Even the Government's own paper from Sustainability Victoria, released to coincide with its wind farm announcement, admits: "At low levels of wind generation, more aggressive (electricity price) bidding by brown coal generators results in less of this generation being displaced."

The National Electricity Market Management Company runs the national grid in the eastern states. When its head of corporate affairs, Paul Price, was asked, he confirmed that wind had priority and, when it was generating, would displace the more expensive, lower-polluting forms of power.

Because wind is erratic, as the Germans know, back-up is needed to maintain electricity grid stability.

This, according to Deputy Premier John Thwaites, is one reason why the Government is trying to place generators across as much of the state as possible — to try to have wind generation coming from at least somewhere at any one time.

There are other problems with wind displacing brown coal. Brown coal stations take many hours to increase or decrease output. But there is a potentially more crucial catch.

Richard Elkington, general manager for power at the state's biggest generator, Loy Yang Power, admits that as brown coal stations reduce output, they start emitting more greenhouse gas in proportion to electricity generated.

"Brown coal stations are at highest efficiency when they are running flat-out, that is also when they produce their least greenhouse gas.

"Our station's output is 2000 megawatts maximum and we can cut it to 1200 megawatts, but we produce more greenhouse gas per megawatt, the lower we go. Anything lower than that and the cost of generation starts to rocket dramatically."

30 June 2006

What is the MRET?

The call by the renewable energy sector and its supporters to increase the MRET to 10% has left many people confused. What is the MRET?

A recent publication produced by the Parliamentary Library of the Australian describes what the MRET is and how the MRET scheme works. The Parliamentary Library provides independent research services for all members of the Australian Parliament.

Bills Digest 109, 2005-06 accompanied the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2006 which was passed by both Houses of Parliament in June 2006. This document is also available in PDF format (201 kb).

23 June 2006

States reject national code for wind energy installations

State and territory governments have rejected a proposal for a national code for wind farms.

A meeting of State and Territory environment ministers (EPHC) in Sydney on Friday (23 June) voted against the federal government's call for a National Code for Wind Energy Installations.

Federal Minister for Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, said the decision by the State and Territory governments not to support the development of a National Code for Wind Energy Installations was a disappointment for both local communities and the wind energy industry.

In a statement, Senator Campbell said that he would proceed to convene a national round table with local government, local communities and the wind industry. The States and Territories would be invited to take part.

"Wind power is an important source of renewable energy and the Australian Government wants to ensure it continues to form part of our energy mix, in a way that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable,” Senator Campbell said.

“However, an increasing number of communities are expressing concern about the potential impact of wind energy installations on landscapes, amenity and threatened species. Much of these publicly expressed concerns centre around the consistency and transparency of the public consultation process – essentially communities want to make sure that their views are heard and given a high priority," he said.

“The wind energy industry is also concerned about the need for greater consistency and transparency in the wind energy installation planning and approval process.

“The message is loud and clear from both sides of this debate – but it apparently isn't being heard by the State and Territory Governments,” he said.

In commenting on the outcome, Senator Campbell noted the response from three state governments.

“I am very disappointed that, despite initial indications from New South Wales and Queensland that they would support communities in this matter, politics ruled the day" he said.

Senator Campbell said, “I was particularly disturbed to hear the West Australian Environment Minister Mark McGowan argue against the code with the words, “… sometimes when local communities don't agree you have to roll over the top of them …”.

“This is why we need a code, so that the members of the local community are given a high prominence in determining whether wind installation will go ahead.”

After the meeting, Victorian Environment Minister, John Thwaites, said that a national wind farm code would "just be more red tape to hold up wind farms".

"What we don't need is a whole lot of bureaucratic red tape imposed by the commonwealth which will strangle our wind farms and lead to a reduction in that clean, green energy," he said.

Related links:

• States reject wind farm proposal, The Age, 24 June 2006

• State/Territory wind decision "a slap in the face" for communities, Press release from Senator the Hon Ian Campbell, Federal Minister for Environment and Heritage

17 May 2006

What's really driving the wind rush?

An article published in The Canberra Times argues that the rush to have wind farms approved is motivated by developers seeking to reduce their ongoing operating costs.

According to its author, Simon Gross, contribution wind farms can make to the greater good by reducing greenhouse emissions over the long term shows little justification for the kind of compromise required by residents who end up having to put up with industrial windscrapers in their neighbourhood.

Here is the full article, or read it on the Canberra Times website (external link):

Getting in on ground floor more about positioning than pioneering
Simon Grose
Wednesday, 17 May 2006
Canberra Times

WAS ENVIRONMENT Minister Ian Campbell playing bloody-minded local political games with his decision to block a wind farm development in Victoria because it could kill a bird or two? Yes.

By so doing, did he jeopardise the national and international effort to lower greenhouse emissions to save the planet? No.

Almost all resistance to wind farms is driven by NIMBY concerns - normal human stuff that has sometimes to be painfully compromised for the greater communal good, just as it is when governments build new roads or select sites for jails, drag strips, marine parks and so on.

But a dispassionate assessment of the contribution wind farms can make to the greater good - by reducing greenhouse emissions over the long term - shows little justification for the kind of compromise required.

Arguments to the contrary are either self-interested skewing of the facts by the wind power industry and associated interest groups, or intellectual dishonesty by eco-Nazis.

Hydro power is by far the cheapest, most reliable renewable source of electricity, and the only one currently capable of providing large amounts of power on demand. The fact that Snowy Hydro is going to sell for a pretty price pays testament to this fact, as does the installation of a $780million cable between Tasmania and Victoria to mainly enable hydro power from the island state to be sold into the national grid.

If Australia had more flowing rivers to dam, hydro would be the focus of proposed renewable energy developments, bringing with it another suite of difficult environmental compromises. But we are not so endowed, so wind power is the most competitive source of new renewable energy in terms of price per kilowatt hour and scale of potential supply.

Solar power is suited to individual remote sites where it can reduce - but not eliminate - reliance on diesel generators, or for buildings with battery systems and appliances adapted to the source of supply.

Efficiency of photovoltaic solar power generation will have to improve markedly before solar arrays can be a realistic contributor to the national grid. Other approaches to generating power from the sun - such as focusing solar energy to heat water to create steam to run turbines - also have to improve markedly to justify commercial investment.

These will require at least another decade of research before their potential can be maximised, but they will still be limited by the fact that they play dead when the sun is not shining.

Parallel research into more efficient storage technologies will have to make huge leaps and bounds to overcome this problem.

More realistic applications of solar-to-steam applications include those being researched by CSIRO and others to feed solar energy into coal-fired power stations, allowing less coal to be burnt when the sun is shining. Geothermal power, wave and tidal power, and power from putative kilometre-high towers which would channel hot air from the Earth's surface to the cooler heights, are all experimental at best.

So wind power is the best renewable option available.

But to those who manage the nation's power supply, it is at best a second-tier option and at worse a nuisance. It cannot compete on a price basis with coal and gas as an energy source, and because it is unreliable it cannot replace them or hydro as a source of base-load power.

So it relies on subsidies. That is why it has advanced so far in Europe, where it has been subsidised in a number of market-distorting ways as the EU tried to meet the unrealistic emission-reduction targets it agreed to in the Kyoto process.

The fact that Europe is going to fail to meet its Kyoto targets should indicate that subsidising wind farms is a dubious investment, but the inexorably growing evidence for global warming due to fossil fuel emissions provide a political rationale for these subsidies - they make it look like governments are doing something about the problem.

Not enough though, as is always the way with subsidies, which create their own addicts. One was squawking for a fix in the media last week, complaining that the Federal Government's failure to increase the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target from its current 2 per cent had caused it to abort a couple of wind farm projects.

If this was a bunch of agricultural farmers saying they could only increase production if the Government guaranteed them a bigger market share at a price of their choosing, they would be given short shrift. So it should be for wind farmers.

Labor says a Beazley government would raise the MRET, a move that would be championed by the Democrats and Greens, so the wind farmer addicts have hope to cling to. In the meantime, they are looking for other subsidies to bolster their addiction.

Windy sites tend to be some distance from suitable connection points to our national grid. Distribution and transmission companies have no obligation or incentive to provide those connections for power generators. Nor can they spread the costs of these connections across all power generators because the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and state energy regulators do not allow it.

Consumer and other end-user advocacy groups also prefer transparency when it comes to the cost of power. This is why energy retailers offer Green Power schemes to which customers can opt-in to pay more for their power. The retailers have to buy 2 percent of their supply from the higher-cost renewable sources to meet their MRET requirements, so they have to market it at a higher cost.

Paying to connect their wind farms to the distant national grid adds to wind farmers' costs, so they are looking for assistance. The Council of Australian Governments and the Ministerial Council on Energy is looking at options for a renewable energy connections policy, with subsidies for grid connections one item on the list.

The intermittent nature of wind energy generation also imposes costs on distributors who have to invest in infrastructure - called power conditioners - to manage that input. As the quantum of variable wind energy available to the grid increases, that cost increases.

Existing wind farms got in relatively cheaply because their impact on the grid was relatively minor, but Tasmanian and SA grid managers are now facing increasing costs of power conditioning as wind energy supply increases in those states.

"New wind generators are getting hit with what they believe are userous and abusive charges to deal with these issues that have built up," one industry insider said last week.

"The early movers in the wind area have got in saying 'our little bit won't bugger up the system' so therefore they haven't been charged for it'."

That is part of the motivation for wind farm developers to push for approval now, to get in as early as possible at lower cost. In the medium term, they expect the MRET to be raised, enabling a guaranteed market for their product for years, despite its higher cost. If they get subsidised connections to the grid, then all the better for the bottom line.

The locals opposing the wind farm planned for the Bungendore hinterland are on the front line of this industry push.

According to a spokesman for Windlab, an ACT start-up company whose software assesses the windiness of sites across the country, the Bungendore site is among the top 10 per cent of potential wind farm sites in Australia, and would operate at peak capacity up to 40 per cent of the time.

This means that its operating efficiency would be well below 40 per cent when averaged over a year. In any other business, this would be a lousy investment. But subsidies by Australians - as taxpayers and consumers - make it a goer for profit sniffers like Babcock and Brown which is backing the venture.

As they try to preserve their local environmental by resisting a wind farm in their own backyard, Bungendore's taxpayers and power consumers should also consider the wider issue of whether their money is best invested in wind farms or in cleaner coal technologies or - shock horror - nuclear power, to preserve the global environment.

3 May 2006

Discussion paper for a National Code for Wind Farms released for comment

he Hon Senator Ian Campbell, Federal Minister for the Environment, has released a discussion paper on a National Code for Wind Farms.

Speaking at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy annual conference in Brisbane, Senator Campbell said a National Code for Wind Farms would provide the basis for consistency, certainty and community confidence in wind power as a future source of energy.

“The number of wind farms across Australia has grown rapidly over the past decade, due largely to the investment stimulus provided by the Howard Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target,” Senator Campbell said.

“In 1996, there were only 20 wind turbines in Australia, with a total energy generating capacity of around 2.7 megawatts. Today there are 444 wind turbines, representing a 2120 per cent increase, with a total capacity of about 638 megawatts. Another 130 turbines are under construction.

“This rapid growth of wind farms in Australia has generated significant community and industry concern and debate. While there is a great deal of support for the wind industry, I have received a large number of letters from people across Australia unhappy with the consultation processes, and the location and size of proposed developments.

“The multiple planning and regulatory arrangements operating across jurisdictions frustrate and confuse them, raising the legitimate question as to why there is no national standard.

“A key component of the code should take into account the wishes of the local community, often most fairly expressed by the local council,” Senator Campbell said.

Senatory Campbell said he would also be holding a roundtable of stakeholders to further develop the National Code.

For more information, and to download a copy of the paper, visit the Australian Greenhouse Office website.

February 2006

Wind-turbine fire at South Australian Wind Plant

From the Sunday Mail (South Australia), 12 February 2006
(or read it on the news.com website)

A $3 MILLION wind farm turbine caught fire while dozens shut down at the time South Australia most needed them - when a heatwave left 63,000 South Australian homes without power last month.

Adding to the drama, firefighters could not extinguish the blaze because the tower was too high at 67m.

Lack of wind and automatic shutdowns triggered by hot temperatures were to blame for the state's 180 turbines producing just 10 per cent of their maximum power capacity during the January heat wave, according to experts.

The experience proved SA could not rely on wind power to provide electricity when demand was greatest, the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council (ESIPC) said.

"You never know if the wind will be blowing when you need it to or if wind turbines will shut down," ESIPC spokesman Brad Cowain said.

Operators of the Lake Bonney wind farm, where the turbine fire occurred on Sunday, January 22, said all of its 46 turbines had automatically shut down during the heat wave when temperatures exceeded 40C.

"We want the turbines to operate during peak demand to capture revenue but power output is limited by the automatic shut down to protect electrical instruments," wind farm operator Miles George of Babcock and Brown Wind Partners said.

He said the turbine fire – the first in Australia – had been caused by an electrical fault while maintenance crews were working on it after it had shut down.

Around 3pm, 40 CFS firefighters and six trucks rushed to the wind farm to extinguish the blaze but fire hose water couldn't reach the steel generator at the top of the tower.

Instead, the firefighters watched as fire destroyed the $3 million turbine – which weighs 75 tonnes – and extinguished spot fires ignited by ashes from the turbine blaze.

According to ESIPC, many of the European manufactured turbines used in SA shut down during extreme temperatures to avoid generator meltdown.

"Most turbines are manufactured in Europe where they don't have to worry about operating at high temperatures," Mr Cowain said.

"We are investigating which individual turbines were not operating because of a shut down or lack of wind."

Between Thursday, January 19 and Sunday, January 22, maximum temperatures exceeded 40C throughout most of the state, creating record demands for electricity while wind farm output averaged only 10 per cent.

But during Saturday's peak power demand wind farm output plummeted to just 2 per cent of capacity, producing enough power for only 3500 homes, according to ESIPC. This compared with the maximum capacity of 318MW to power 175,000 homes. SA leads the nation in wind farm energy with five established sites – Starfish Hill, Canunda, Wattle Point, Cathedral Rocks and Lake Bonney.

There are numerous other approved wind farm developments including an AGL plan for 43 turbines at Hallet in the state's Mid North.

But AGL also plans to more than double the capacity of its nearby gas-fired plant, from 180MW to 430MW, at a cost of more than $100 million to ensure peak demand during hot weather can be met.

The state's independent energy regulator Pat Walsh declined to comment about the wind farm performance during the heat wave or its implications on the state's overall energy supply.

Related Links:

Latest News – 2007

News Archive – July to December 2005

• Federal Environment Minister seeks National guidelines on siting windfarms (December 2005)
• Is the wind industry a "feckless, burping juggernaut"? (December 2005)
• Federal Government considers windfarm planning code to protect communities (November 2005)
• EHN deny access to the ridges (August 2005)
• New NSW Planning Minister announced (August 2005)
• Victorian Government rejects windfarm (July 2005)

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