The Future Of Energy Part 2: Wind Power

In part 1 of this series, I made a case for reducing our dependance on fossil fuels as much, and as soon, as possible. In the rest of this series I'll be looking at ways this might be done.

This time round I'll be talking about the role wind power might play.....

Current State Of Play
By the end of 2009, wind produced 2% of the world's electric, double what it was just 3 years earlier.

It provided 20% of the electricity in Denmark, 14% in Ireland and Portugal, 11% in Spain,  8% in Germany, 3% in the UK (with plans to have 15% by 2020), and 2.4% in the U.S.

Worldwide the 5 biggest producers are, in descending order, the United States, China, Germany, Spain, and India.

Ironically, Texas, the oil state, is also the U.S.'s leading state for wind power. It has more than double the UK's output, and if it were a country, it would rank 6th in the world!

Currently, the world's biggest offshore windfarm is off Kent, UK, with 100 turbines. This will soon be dwarfed by 'farms being built and planned elsewhere.

Offshore windfarms are costlier to build than land based, but the extra cost is offset by an improved supply.

Worldwide, the rate of growth in wind power is accelerating with dozens of countries investing heavily in the technology. However, because fossil fuel demand is also growing, wind may only provide 8% of all electric by 2018.


Pros and Cons
Wind energy is plentiful, clean, renewable, available almost everywhere, and creates no greenhouse gases.

However, it is currently more expensive than other, more established ways of generating electric. Well, it is new technology, and like all new tech, the cost is still coming down steadily. So the comparison isn't particularly fair.

Another issue is that you don't have control of the supply: The wind may drop off when you need it most, or be blowing a gale when you don't want it. But electric grid operators are used to meeting varying demand for electric on a round-the-clock basis. So they don't consider varying supply to be a problem, as long as it's part of a balanced mix of sources and wind makes up no more than 20% of the overall supply.


The Future
As I've said, costs are coming down steadily and wind will become increasingly competitive compared to the established technologies. I'd hope that this will mean that wind will be contributing more than the forecasted 8% of the world's electric by 2018.

However, there's that 20% upper limit to consider - Since wind energy is so intermittent, it may be uneconomical to manage beyond this point - So wind could only ever be part of the overall solution.

Looking further into the future, high altitude wind power (HAWP) shows promise. It is based on the fact that, the higher you go, the stronger, steadier and more persistent the wind gets. Traditional turbines wouldn't be able to exploit this, but things like tethered kites and balloons could. That might sound a bit....low tech, but there's some serious money chasing this one and, it's claimed, HAWP can out perform the current generation of turbines, both in terms of cost and output.

Early MARS Prototype From Mageen

There are several companies developing HAWP, including Joby, Mageen, Drachen, KiteGens, and Makani. Most seem to be at the concept or prototyping stage but Mageen are looking to roll out their MARS rotary balloon system to remote rural villages in India next year. Commercial applications still seem to be a few years away but we appear to be seeing the beginnings of a revolution.

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More information about wind power here.

More about HAWP here.