Meadow Lake wind farm is located along I-65 in Indiana. This weekend, while driving to and from a tradeshow, I had the pleasure of seeing the windfarm first hand. The turbines are huge and spread literally to the horizon from the roadway, actually they were very impressive looking from the car as the sun set.

On the way out, one or two of the windmills were turning the rest were stationary, on the return they were 80 percent turning. Now I don’t mind windmills really, but they don’t make much sense to me. As with all green energy I’ve come across, the generation capacity is exaggerated in this field as are the low costs, but the problem with wind generation is that the wind isn’t always blowing.

From this link:

According to a study of wind in the United States, ten or more widely-separated wind farms connected through the grid could be relied upon for from 33 to 47% of their average output (15–20% of nominal capacity) as reliable, baseload power, as long as minimum criteria are met for wind speed and turbine height.[25][26] When calculating the generating capacity available to meet peak demand, [ERCOT] (manages Texas grid) counts wind generation at 8.7% of nameplate capacity.[27]

Only 8.7 percent of rated capacity!! Wow.

What was also interesting is from the same link there was a discussion and critique of nuclear power for it’s downtime.

The remaining U.S. nuclear plants produce approximately 90% of their full-time full-load potential, but even they must shut down (on average) for 39 days every 17 months for refueling and maintenance.[32] To cope with such intermittence by nuclear (and centralized fossil-fuelled) power plants, utilities install a “reserve margin” of roughly 15% extra capacity spinning ready for instant use.[32]

So with a 90% peak capacity, they installed a 15% extra capacity to compensate. Since Wind can be counted on for 15-20 percent of normal capacity, you would have to install at least 85% of additional capacity and another 5% for headroom or fully 90 percent of windpower must be backed up by some sort of additional generation.

With every windfarm, you need a nearly equal output plant which can be shut down. You have now paid twice for your electricity generation equipment so equipment costs can’t be nearly as good as stated.

But as always the fun is in the numbers. I’ve not done any calculation at the point of writing the above, it is a stream of thought post so we can have the same entertainment together.

In driving past the windfarm the first time, I just noticed they weren’t turning again. I’ve driven past many times, however, on the return trip when things were rolling along pretty well, I noticed the size of the power lines from this huge facility. They were anemic looking things, mounted on wooden poles with short insulators rather than the huge metal structures I’m used to seeing from our local nuclear power plants. It was rather surprising considering that the massive windfarm extends all the way to the horizon. I thought I must be mistaken, until I noticed the tiny little substation joining the field to the line — to be accurate though there were a few of these lines that we noticed, but not too many.

Phase I consists of 121 Vestas V82[2] 1.65 MW wind turbines, for a total nameplate capacity of 199.65 MW.[4] Groundbreaking ceremonies occurred on April 14, 2009.[5] Phase I became operational in October, 2009.[3] At that time, Horizon had not completed a power purchase agreement with a utility company.[3] Instead, Horizon began selling the wind farm’s output to the regional wholesale electricity market.[2]

199 MW is quite a bit of power,when the farm is finished, they plan 1000 MW of nameplate capacity.

At the planned nameplate capacity of 1000 MW, Meadow Lake would be one of the largest wind farms in the world, generating enough electricity to power about 250,000 homes,[5] annually saving 1,684 million gallons of water and eliminating 3.1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.[8] Phases I and II should eliminate just under one million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.[3]

They also claim that is enough power for 250,000 homes. At full capacity 1,000,000,000 Watts /250,000 homes = 4000 watts/home. At 20 percent capacity though, you are looking at a paltry 800 Watts per home total average output. The Texas grid counts on only 8.7% of nameplate capacity or 348 watts per home for 250,000 homes. Nowhere near what is used. Tennessee used an average of 11000 kWh/year which translates to a annual average home consumption of 1200 Watts continuous. So using Texas numbers for wind power, we get enough electricity for 72,500 homes when the full 1,000,000,000 Watt wind farm is finished.

The wind farm cost for installation is 2 billion for 660 windmills or $3 million USD/windmill:

It will cost them more than $2 billion. Indiana wind farms will be the largest of the Horizon’s farms and the proposed site will be at Meadow Lake in White County.

That must include transmission lines because from this link they state:

Each turbine costs between $1.8 million and $2 million to build.

So, if the true (not exaggerated) generation capacity of this 2 billion dollar project is spread across 72500 homes, the cost to these taxpayers is: $27,586 USD per home. This number doesn’t include the cost for backup generation when the wind isn’t blowing. The lifespan of a turbine is expected to be about 20 years or $1,400 USD/year for equipment costs – no interest included.

If you figure then about a 2x multiplier for maintenance and profit, again ignoring the need for backup generation, you would end up with about 200USD/month for your electric bill at 11000kWh/year or 916 kWh/month or $200/916 = $0.22 USD/kWh whereas most pricing is about 0.08 currently. I thought wind was supposed to be more competitive than this!

But something else interesting is the area of the wind farm. Phase 1 is designed to generate (nameplate capacity) 199MW of power over 60 sq miles.

Phase I spreads over 26,000 acres on a ten by six mile area. Since large wind turbines must be spaced at least 5 to 10 rotor diameters apart to avoid wind shadowing, most of the land between turbines remains productive farmland. Only about 250 acres of farmland have been taken out of production by the 121 turbines.[1]

The total current generation capacity of the US is about 1000 GW or 1,000,000 MW. So if we take 199MW * 0.087 (continuous average capacity per Texas grid) = 17MW or 1/58,823 of the total US requirement. How many square miles is that?

60 *58823 = 3,529,380 sq miles of windfarm.

Since Alaska is 656,000 sq miles, that is not a great number. If we use the windfarm at a fantastically unrealistic 40 percent nameplate capacity 199MW*.4 = 79.6MW for 60 sq miles of windfarm it would only take 753,000 sq miles to replace the US’s current electrical generation capacity.

An area equal to Texas + California + Montana + Arizona + Nevada + Colorado + Oregon, if we can achieve the same density of windfarm as the Indiana installation with 40 percent of nameplate capacity.

BTW, at the realistic (functional) number of 0.087 times nameplate capacity per Texas, we can cover the entire US with windfarm and equal our current generation capacity. The US has 3,539,225 sq mi which is an excellent match to windfarm performance and current generation.

That would make for some odd landscapes!

Now just so you can compare numbers, nuclear power plants cost about $2000 per kW or $2 billion for a plant to reliably produce the nameplate capacity of the massive Indiana windfarm’s 1000 MW of electricity at 90% operation capacity with a 40 year life. I’ll do a more complete post on nuclear power later but just from this simple fact, the nuclear plant starts out looking a hell of a lot better.

At this point though, even if I screwed up the numbers somewhere, I feel a whole lot worse about wind power than I did when this post started. It is obviously a non-viable method with high costs, low energy density and no possibility to solve world energy needs. IOW, another big green waste of money. Too bad Nobel prize winning energy secretary Stephen Chu, doesn’t have a calculator.

Then you get guys who are so ready to implement something green or renewable to save the world, they just never seem to do the numbers. Unless someone shows me where there is a huge error in this post, my opinion of wind power has now officially changed.



