Offshore oil vs. offshore wind ... who wins?
How many offshore wind turbines could have been bought for the cost of 1 Deepwater Horizon? The answer is enlightening.
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look up the game frontlines:fuel of war intro video on youtube! THIS WILL HAPPEN IF WE DONT CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I stumbled into this more detailed explanation on "crude to gas". They roughly estimate 19.5 gallons of gas per barrel of crude. That makes a pretty big change in your calculations (in favor of wind).
Common sense would tell you that when considering an energy source, one could make 2 lists; pros and cons. If the cons include things such as "lethal to humans and wildlife" or "releases carcinogens into the environment", it would immediately be removed from consideration. I feel like the 2% of the population (the elite/powerful) who gain most by toxic endeavors such as offshore drilling and nuclear plants are fully aware of the dangers to the general population and could care less, as.... More
I stumbled across this article. And the article stumbled through offshore wind. What a disaster. Please refrain from writing about energy technology. You don't have any idea what you're doing and it reflects poorly on the industry. I don't have any idea what: "kWh's of power capacity per year" means. And neither do you. Kilowatts are power. Kilowatt-hours are energy. Mixing the two projects ignorance of the subject and invalidates the article.
Seems to be mainly owned by American Investors.
Be careful what you wish for!
To talk about all the things wrong with this article first you have to look at the deepwater horizons damage which is tiny compared to what was predicted. The natural bacteria in the ocean that are designed for breaking down oil (which always seeps up from the floor) are doing their job. Very few beaches are soiled and very little environmental damage was done by a disaster of this magnitude. Mother nature as the website is called seems to have a way of adapting to protect itself from us..... More
I perceive a nontrivial fudge factor at work in these numbers. For example, I pay about 13 cents per kW/H of grid power (as does just about everybody in my state). My cost of gas has averaged about $2.70 per gallon, and as of this very moment is actually a bit less than that. My own vehicle gets about 32 MPG. These differences add up substantively.
The problem continues. The estimate of yearly output of an array of 60 megawatt arrays operating continually at peak capacity is about 3,600,000.... More
How can you stand driving such a small vehicle, ever considered a large vehicle might be safer, more comfortable, and more practical on long trips or off-road vacations? Try a ford excursion or a ford F-35 pickup truck
"let's say a 60 megawatt project will go for $200 million. Divide that by $12 billion and you get sixty 60-megawatt wind projects, or about 33 billion kilowatts of power capacity per year. "
How does this add up?
60 * 60 Megawatts = 3,600,000,000 watts. That's 3,600,000 kilowatts, an order of magnitude away from 33 billion kilowatts. What does "capacity per year" even mean? Did you maybe mean kilowatt hours?
Wind power is the best,economical,clean and green energy resource just think about the climatic consequences and include the rate of climatic disturbance factor in your calculation.
Apart from the number of gallons of gasoline from a barrel, there's one major flaw in your calculation: The 60 MWs of Alpha Ventus are a peak power figure. As wind doesn't always blow, there blows your calculation...
well you are right that 60mw is peak power,secondly your assumption that wind doesnt blow at this paticular site is absolutely wrong.The approximate amount of power derived is expected to be in the range of 40-50mw.
The intermittency of wind is represented by capacity factor in the calculation of energy output. Capacity factors for large offshore wind projects are 35-40%. That means the average output of Alpha Ventus is 24 MW and the annual energy production will be about 200,000 MWh. Wind is still a good deal for us, just not quite as good as you have said.
Eventually we must run out of oil, so we may as well start now finding an alternative. Wind is one of the attractive alternatives
One item missing from all the above equations is the cost of the damage to the biosphere of all that fossil fuel that would have been released by the oil well(s). Yes, wind turbines and their maintenance do have a carbon footprint and do require dwindling resources, but so do the cars and the rest of their support infrastructure.
I suspect the biggest elephant hiding in the trunk (bad pun alert!) is the need for us all to accept that you don't need a multi-ton behemoth to move a driver and.... More
We'll play in the sand, catch some rays and watch the windmills spin around. Won't that be romantic? Aahhh! What a beautiful sunrise behind that windmill. Oh. That seagull better look out!. Bummer too late. I was wondering where all the seagulls went.
No thanks this whole 'compare the numbers' should have stayed where it started - on the back of a napkin.
Look honey at the seagull! It's all covered with oil and can't even fly because of the extra pounds. Man, what a depressing day to go to the beach! Wait, we're covered in oil, too!
No thanks this whole 'crude oil' should have stayed where it started - in the ground.
We got the power of nature in our hands but because it's almost free the govt doesn't like the idea it's allways the money at the end will destroy ourselves if we continue this careless ways
We got the power of nature in our hands but because it's almost free the govt doesn't like the idea it's allways the money at the end will destroy ourselves if we continue this careless ways
An average 1000 megawatt nuclear plant costs about $10 billion. So, you are saying that we could get about 30 times more electricity from the same dollar investment of wind as compared to nuclear electricity generation. I think this is a better way of looking at things.
Look at the cost of the latest ("state of the art") reactors in europe. They're massively over budget (on both time and money). And that's not even factoring in the cost of spent fuel storage (which the government will end up paying for, no doubt).
Plus the risk, which is also picked up by the government for major events.
Without government backing, and lax enviro regs, nuclear doesn't even make financial sense.
But Judson, you haven't factored in the costs to human health and environment when the inevitable accident occurs, so you're not being fair either. All potentials need to be included.
Hey rerun you are being fair by saying an accident at a nuclear plant is inevitable. Most nuclear plants never catch a glimpse of an accident, just when something bad does happen you will hear about it from the media. No need to assume a nuke plant means a guaranteed reproduction of Chernobyl
First off, you can bet that the citizens against virtually everything won't go for wind.
Second, I love how you forgot transmission costs. As if you just sent the electricity directly to the car. Thank god other posters called you on it as well.
Third, want to spend tons of money on pie in the sky projects? Well why didn't we just take the "Stimulus and TARP" trillions and invest it in a massive fusion energy project? Oh yeah, the people that would help don't pay for.... More
Alpha Ventus won't generate that much electricity. There aren't 44 gallons of gasoline in a barrel of oil (it's more like 19 gallons of gasoline). Offshore wind won't provide electricity at 10 cents per kwh. Deepwater Horizon couldn't have extracted all 7 billion barrels of oil (over 25 years, that'd be an average of 767,000 barrels per day - or 50% of current total Gulf extraction).
All in all, nice attempt, but go rerun your numbers and assumptions.
Don't forget externalized costs of offshore wind development. For the Great Lakes, see www.glfc.org for concerns of Great Lakes fish managers. Add bird mortalities in this important migratory flyway. Shorelines will be hardened, tons of concrete will be poured, and don't forget the blasted red flashing lights over night waters. In the Ontario waters of Lake Erie alone ~700 offshore turbines are proposed. If the US matches the.... More
Considering the glaring omission that the oil wells are not replenished, yet wind will be around longer than we will, this make for some very serious thought.
Unfortunately :
A 60MW array does not produce 60MW - I believe. I think the rated and actual delivered numbers are vastly different.
Also you can't supply the electricity at one cost - your calcs on the 60MW array - and then consume it at another which is based on the cost of coal ("grid electricity is about 10c").
Also 60MW (or whatever) produced in Cape Cod doesn't all reach your Prius - there are transmission losses.
Then you have to account for oil and refining.... More
You forgot to include the fact that you lose 20% when you have to store the wind generated energy in a battery (one big advantage of gasoline is that it stores in a gas tank at a much lower price than solar and wind which aren't always available).
I'm in favor of wind power, but the reason it's not ubiquitous is not a lack of will or insight as you claim, but rather a lack of battery/storage technology.
One barrel of crude oil yeilds 19.65 gallons of gasoline, not the 44 gallons given in item 4 of this article. The number of cars fueled by Deepwater Horizon yield estimates are therefore overstated by more than a factor of two.
I think that there's a major flaw in this argument in that it is very expensive to set up offshore wind farms and probably very much cheaper to set them up on land. Offshore oil exploration exists because they're not fing enough on land.
Wind is plentiful throughout this country. We don't absolutely need to go offshore.
I'd like to take a wild guess and say that a land based windmill farm will come in at the same price or cheaper than oil in terms of the net product vs. cost. Is.... More
It has been my impression that deep water drilling is used mainly because environmental regulations have blocked it closer to and on land.
I think that there's a major flaw in this argument in that it is very expensive to set up offshore wind farms and probably very much cheaper to set them up on land. Offshore oil exploration exists because they're not fing enough on land.
Wind is plentiful throughout this country. We don't absolutely need to go offshore.
I'd like to take a wild guess and say that a land based windmill farm will come in at the same price or cheaper than oil in terms of the net product vs. cost. Is.... More
There are a number of problems with scaling up wind and solar to replace oil. As someone on Huffington Post pointed out, Wind and Solar are free--it's the extraction equipment that kills you.
the main hypothetical on oil vs alternatives is EROEI--energy return on Energy Invested. Oil still outproduces the alternatives (although oil out of the gulf has a lower return because of the expense of the drilling techniques for deep water). People will get sticker shock on the added.... More
There are a number of problems with scaling up wind and solar to replace oil. As someone on Huffington Post pointed out, Wind and Solar are free--it's the extraction equipment that kills you.
the main hypothetical on oil vs alternatives is EROEI--energy return on Energy Invested. Oil still outproduces the alternatives (although oil out of the gulf has a lower return because of the expense of the drilling techniques for deep water). People will get sticker shock on the added.... More
The whole petroleum industry and the gasoline produces/sellers receive subsidies in the form of tax breaks etc. from the government. The cost of $3 per gallon used in your calculations doesn't reflect the real cost of gasoline. All the more reason to support wind power.
There is another number that was excluded from the calculations; The cost of obtaining oil on the world market. That cost also includes the cost of our military involvement in the Middle East where much of the oil is located. Our military involvement there is in the trillions of dollars, not to mention the lives of our servicemen and woman. How do you put a dollar figure on those lives?
Respectfully submitted.
Good Question - right now I cannot remember the exact source - but
the book End of Oil reported a US University study that the added cost
of military involvement with respect to Mideast oil - came to an extra 20cents per gallon. (However that study was a few years ago.. and things may be qute a bit more now.
Peter
Unfortunately you left one important number out of your calculations.. the initial cost of the car. It's vastly more expensive to buy electrical than gas powered cars. That needs to be addressed in some fashion whether through incentive programs paid for by taxing the bejesus out of gas guzzlers or just improvements that drop the price of electric and hybrid cars.
The new electric/hybrid/etc cars coming down the pike are *much* cheaper than their predecessors and are close to gas cars (and cheaper to maintain over a lifetime of use) so this argument, thankfully, is going to diminish.
Compelling argument. Here is another method of wind power generation that may save even more money and generate more power: http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2009/12/from-war-machine-to-clean-energy/







































