Good Example Of Report On Large Scale Renewable-Wind

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The wind turbines are considered to be the most cost-effective, less energy resource utilization, advanced and renewable way to generate electricity in the system. The wind turbine system follows economics that can compete with fully established central electricity stations at wholesale costs. The wind power has been utilized to function as a renewable source of energy and power for thousands of years now for tasks such as pumping water, providing power to factories, grinding grain and to sailing ships (p.461). The first wind turbine in the world that helped in generating electricity was established in 1891 by a school principal – a Danish inventor known as Poul la Cour (p.461).
The United States of America did not concentrate much on the effective utilization of wind power as an alternative renewable source of energy, but between 2000-2006, the development of wind power plants grew at a massive annual rate of 23 percent, with a total of almost 14,000 MW in 2007 being generated from wind turbines. This production was good enough to satisfy the electricity needs and requirements of more than 3.5 million homes in the country. There was another launch of wind power project that generated more than 2500 MW of electricity in 2006 which added to 19 percent of the year’s power additions to the country electricity generation grid. This means that almost US$ 3.7 billion were invested in new installments of wind power turbines (p.462).
In order to establish a wind power turbine a flat grazing land is easier to develop, whereas the forested sites or mountain ridges are difficult to develop and can be environmentally damaging. The urban areas and even the most sensitive lands such as the national parks cannot be used for development of wind turbines. The economic viability of the area must be taken into consideration and also its proximity to the transmission lines with capacity must be considered before the development of wind turbine in order to take advantage of the available power at full capacity (p.465).
One of the main benefits of wind turbines is that it results in a reduction in the cost of capital per kW of the capacity that is installed as economies of scale is reached. There are many factors that result in overall cost reduction. First and foremost, the labor costs to assemble components of large machines is not much higher than for small machines. Secondly, the cost of a rotor is proportional to its diameter, whereas the power it delivers is proportional to the diameter squared. The third factor is that the cost of installation, permitting the development of the wind turbine plant, planning, etc. does not increase the cost as the size of the plant increases. The fourth and last factor is that servicing of large wind power plants is not much different than servicing smaller turbines and most importantly, the new turbines are designed to need less human servicing since the start (p.478).
The offshore installation cost of a wind turbine is almost US$ 1600 / kW, which is extremely expensive, but the consistency and the strength of wind power can offset these initial capital investment disadvantages incurred (p.478). Since the wind turbines are fully compatible with traditional means of farming, the revenue of land lease of thousands of dollars per year from each wind turbine can dramatically boost the income of ranchers and farmers. Another benefit of wind farms is that are able to add significantly to the local tax base that can help to fund and develop hospitals, schools, sanitation facilities, clean water programs, etc. The ongoing maintenance and construction of wind turbine farms also increases local employment level (p.479).
One of the most prominent negative impacts of wind turbines is avian collisions, especially with birds and bats. There are two locations where most of these accidents have occurred – the Altamont Wind Resource Area near San Francisco for birds and Appalachia with bats. These two particular locations stand apart from the most popular wind turbine sites and farms in the country. There are more than 5000 wind turbines in the area and many of them are old and smaller machines with blades with lattice towers that easily provide a resting place for birds resulting in more accidents and high mortality rates. The public is concerned more about the raptor birds that suffer due to high mortality rates as the year-round there is an abundance of preys in the local area. California has more than 20 percent wind turbine sites in the country and is considered to be 90 percent cause of raptor deaths (p.481). The shift to new turbines with taller and slower turbines have considerably reduced the accidents leading to the death of birds. The turbines are another cause of death of more than 30,000 birds each year, whereas the domestic cats and ferals kill almost 100 million birds each year and the collisions of birds with airplanes and buildings kill almost 500 million birds.

Work Cited

Chapter 12: Large-Scale Renewables: Wind, pp.461-482.