Wind Turbine Shortage Creating a Drag
March 2, 2006 by admin
Filed under Green Living
There’s news coming out now that a shortage in the supply of large wind turbines is starting to put a drag on new wind farm developments.
Apparently GE, the company which currently produces 2/3’s of the turbines for large-scale wind power in the US, has an order book that’s full for the next two years. Across the pond in Europe, manufacturers there are reporting similar levels of back orders.
Some quotes from Ken Valley, president of Midwest Energy Finance, in an AP article…
“One Midwestern wind developer is planning a project with seven turbines, but he can’t get them,” Valley said. “Midwest would have had more than $100 million worth of projects this year, but the shortage of turbines is getting in the way.”
…
Valley estimated that in the past 18 months wind turbine prices have gone up 50 percent per megawatt, partly because of demand outstripping supply.
As Steve asks over at Groovy Green, “I am curious to know what companies are waiting for to increase production?” I suppose there’s the possibility that companies like GE might be dragging their feet to keep demand high, which would keep prices high, which would pad their bottom line, or is that too cynical?
Here’s that AP article from the Brainerd Dispatch.
[via Groovy Green]
Dragging production to increase prices? There’s competitioon in the wind industry – GE does NOT produce two thirds of all turibines in this country. Vestas, Liberty and Siemens are all active. Obviously this poster doesn’t undestand how turibines are built. They cannot be mass prodcued and they requires things like propellers (and other parts) that GE doesn’t even manufacture. A wind turibine is an overegineered producer of small amounts of unreliable and uncontrollable power that requires fossil plant backup (complete with carbon emissions). Wind power is a joke that is making windfarm owners rich off of fed subsidies and state regs that force utilities to buy into crappy wind and pay
exorbitant prices. That “free wind” doesn’t seem very relevant when royalties for landowners are greater than the fuel costs for nuclear plants.
The wind assocation cheerleaders can always be expected to mislead the public with their “facts”
about windpower – they are about as reliable as the wind is.
Will the real Kent Beukert please stand up? The following is a comment from another blog.
“Calling wind turbines “tall physical manmade objects” strikes me as a humorously irrelevant.
That oddly fails to denigrate the Statute of Liberty, another tall, physical, manmade object
Nothing is quite so breathtaking as seeing a long string of wind turbines working their magic at twilight off the shoreline. This web site is “litter.” Wind turbines are poetry in motion and valued destinations for visitors from far and wide. Photos of such “litter” recently took top prizes at a local art gallery showing. I guess those artists and patrons don’t measure up to this writer’s aesthetic standards. Don’t let those who claim they are the authority of aesthetic visual standards make unchallenged arrogant pronouncents about wind turbines.
Posted by: kent beuchert at Jul 10, 2006 11:18:50 PM”
Kent, if that is really you, for someone with an evident focus on the energy business, you seem to be missing the plot. The subsidies and regs you refer to available for wind energy producers pale by comparison to those subsidies provided to the oil and gas industry, well after oil and gas technologies had reached maturity. Investment credits, accelerated depreciation, production credits for enhanced oil recovery, and the like are still available to the oil and gas industry today.
However, you have overlooked something far more important. The environmental impact of wind is in the moment. When you remove a wind park, it is gone. Unlike the impact of oil & gas, coal, and nuclear power technologies, where pollution is something that has impact for many years, and burdens our children in unimaginable ways.
Lastly, while wind is not a perfect technology, it is a very promising one which needs to evolve. For instance, coupling wind parks with an effective and green battery storage systems (which have made progress thanks to the auto industry) will significantly improve the value of wind generated power, by de-coupling the time of generation with the time of use. Wind power does have a place which is evident by its rapid growth globally.
brad