Wind Power Produces Just 4-14% Emissions of Fossil Fuels, Even With Manufacturing & Decommissioning

[FBaggins]

21. That explains how I "missed" them... they don't support your prior post.

It's a bit of a document dump (which would otherwise imply that you're not comfortable with your position), so let's pare it down a bit.

There's no point in throwing in bunches of paragraphs about how wind power cuts GHG emissions (not disputed) or has grown rapidly (obvious). It's also silly to make wildly unsupportable statements like "Wind is MUCH Cheaper than Coal & Natural Gas (if You Know How to Add)" (Did you read your earlier thread re: that new wind farm in Germany?)

Let's look at just what was argued. The claim that you were replying to was that wind doesn’t “replace” fossil fuel dependency because wind power actually requires natural gas generators to be available to kick in when the wind wasn’t blowing. Your reply was that this was actually true of nuclear power and not wind. That a GW reactor required lots of spinning reserves in case it “trips” and that wind power displaces gas-fired generation and didn’t need a spinning reserve.

So let’s score those claims by your posted articles:

1)Spinning reserve for nuclear – not supported in any way in your material (not surprising since it isn’t supportable). Nuclear requires the same reserve as any other generation source. The grid needs to have enough excess capacity to handle a percentage of the plants being closed at any given time.

2)Wind power doesn’t require a spinning reserve – Not supported (in fact, refuted “if you know how to add”). But it’s hard to tell whether you intended a rhetorical sleight of hand there. The claim wasn’t that wind required a spinning reserve, but a rapidly available reserve (usually met with natural gas) which might or might not be “spinning” (depending on load and variability).

3)Wind replaces natural gas. Not supported in the context of this debate. Your links provide solid (and somewhat obvious) proof that when the wind is blowing, those turbines necessarily replace generation from something else (except in the rare situations where more power is generated than can be used)… but that doesn’t refute wtmusic’s point – it reinforces it. The gas generation and the wind generation team up to provide reliable generation while burning less fuel. Absent significant storage, a sizable wind penetration requires a backup generation capacity which is almost always provided by natural gas (and this should be included in any “MUCH cheaper” calculation. So it would be correct to say that it replaces some of the actual gas, but not the need for the gas generation capacity.

That was the point you were trying to refute. That significant wind penetration requires backup generation (though I’ll add “or really solid demand-side flexibility that doesn’t currently exist”).

Nuclear, OTOH, doesn’t (not any more than any other generation sourc)... and that’s the difference: Build a 1GW nuclear plant and you can shut down a 1GW coal plant. Build a 3GW (nameplate) wind farm and the only way to shut down that coal plant (all else being equal) is to open up a 600MW gas facility (ignoring all of the obvious points about how you don't assign an individual plant to back up specific other plants). YES, that facility will burn much less gas than such a plant that was intended to provide baseload power, but that really isn't the point under dispute.