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International Law

: Oikos

Wind power: plus ca change

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Some common sense observations about wind power's potential in the UK from The Times: it deserves attention as fossil fuels diminish, it has low capital costs, it's plentiful, it's intermittent and there are challenges with power storage, but this is only a problem if it's intended as baseload supply.

In view of our diminishing returns of coal and petroleum, the utilization of wind-power deserves careful attention. The available water power in this country is very limited, and the development of it generally requires so great a capital outlay that the standing charges more than equal the cost of the coal required to produce the same results by means of gas or steam...
Wind-power, on the other hand, is almost unlimited, and the capital outlay for its development compares favourably with that required for gas or steam. The intermittent and varying results obtained from wind-mills, however, confine their usefulness to industries in which the storage of power can be simply effected, and this feature is always met with in some form or other...
It is only when windmills become are used for providing a constant supply of electric current that storage becomes costly and troublesome, and conditions must be favourable to enable wind to compete successfully with other sources of power in this case.

The punchline? It was written 100 years ago - 1909.

From FT Energy Source blog via Knowledge Problem.

Full post as published by Oikos on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).