> Wind manages to hit an EOREI of 16 or well above break even... until you add
> the buffer. Then wind falls to 3.9 or well below break even. For Ken's
> world that means wind can peform well as long as it's not asked to put on
> its big-boy pants and provide all power without those gas turbine backups.
Wind has about the same EOREI as imported oil. Seems like a pretty
fair trade-off to me.
As to the "big-boy pants" perspective, I completely reject that
argument. Oil refineries have to go offline, pipelines, coal trains,
and all forms of energy production have substantial buffer to allow
for demand changes as well as failures. No one generator is
stand-alone, but part of a large, integrated system.
In the case of wind, a place like Iowa has proven to be a win-win (or
wind-wind). We've been able to avoid construction of any new base-load
generation plants since we've started building out wind energy and
we're able to decommission several significant coal-fired generators.
Iowa is on pace to become a net energy producer based entirely on
renewables.
It is always unfair when we look at renewables as "replacement" to
existing energy production. However, that would assume that the
current generation plants would never need to be replaced and that
they provide 100% of current AND future need. That, however, is
anything but true. The arguments against wind energy, involving the
manufacturing and construction of the turbines as being effectively
energy neutral is a joke as the same calculations against wind are not
applied to the construction of a new carbon-based energy generation
facility. In almost every case, the double and triple counting of the
"negatives" is always applied to renewables, but not to carbon-based
production. Things like including the gas of the cars of the people
who commute to work to build the wind turbines. Really????
I'm sorry that you got me started, but that calculation against
ethanol is also a joke. A total farce. The actual as-run data is
entirely different than the pointy-headed east-coaster's "studies".
AG
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