While Japan’s Nukes sputter, Wind Turbines keep spinning
March 19, 2011
Kamisu wind farm just 300 km (180 miles) from the earthquake epicenter
While Japan’s water-dependent nuclear power plants suck and wheeze and spew radioactive steam, “there has been no wind facility damage reported by any [Japan Wind Energy Association] members, from either the earthquake or the tsunami,” says association head Yoshinori Ueda.
Even the country’s totally badass Kamisu offshore wind farm, with its giant 2 MW turbines with blades big as the wings on a jumbo jet, and only 186 miles from the epicenter of the largest quake ever recorded in Japan, survived without a hiccup thanks to its “battle proof design.” As a result, the nation’s electric companies have asked all of its wind farms to increase power production to maximum, in order to make up for the shortfalls brought about by the failure of certain other aging, non-resilient 20th-century technologies.
Bottom line, if Japan had 30 percent of its energy coming from offshore wind, as opposed to nuclear, the tidal wave and earthquake would have caused nary a ripple in power flow.
This resilience of distributed, renewable energy sources was also demonstrated during the great northeast blackout of 2003 in the US. When power went down, a dozen or so east coast nuclear plants tripped offline, necessitating a restart process that had to proceed, slowly and deliberately, over several days while the power was desperately needed. Meanwhile, wind turbines just kept on churning.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
March 19, 2011 at 9:04 am
[…] […]
March 19, 2011 at 1:03 pm
People wishing to investigate further should visit these two web sites.
USA: http://www.awea.org/
Canada: http://www.canwea.ca/index_e.php
Just for fun, record the coordinates of sites near you, then paste those coordinates into http://maps.google.com to see what they look like.
For example, here is a link for 66 turbines (both sides of the road) running 20 miles in rural Southern Ontario, Canada.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=Tiverton,+Ontario&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=37.462587,78.310547&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Tiverton,+Bruce+County,+Ontario&layer=c&cbll=44.273039,-81.451738&panoid=ZyOKZUmkL4Y5JLMJ7D55ng&cbp=12,252.62,,0,-4.33&ll=44.273039,-81.451738&spn=0.017392,0.109177&z=14
March 19, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I saw this earlier. What a sales pitch for renewables in comparison to the sales nightmare that has been produced for the nuke propaganda department.
> Even the country’s totally badass Kamisu offshore wind farm, with its giant 2 MW turbines with blades big as the wings on a jumbo jet…
They’re impressive – but there are 7 MW monsters already on the market, 10 MW behemoths on the way… and the Spanish are researching 15 frickin’ MW leviathans!
March 19, 2011 at 5:07 pm
P.S. Peter, if you’ve not seen it before, a fascinating real-time display of solar output in Germany: http://www.sma.de/en/news-information/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html – it hit 8.7 GW peak output today. Not bad for mid-March.
It’ll soon be blasting past 10 GW as summer arrives and more solar gets deployed. They’ve also announced a very strong response to the Japanese disaster:
* Germany throws the switch on seven aging nuclear reactors – http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14924547,00.html
They’re schooling the rest of us. Here in the UK, our [redacted expletive] politicians are manipulating the markets to favour nukes and simultaneously gutting FITs for solar.
March 20, 2011 at 11:02 am
These solar graphs are impressive but the asterisk indicates they are only projections. IMHO, wind power is the most practical cousin to hydro electric power. Why? Both Wind and Hydro can generate power at night as well on cloudy days. Now before everyone jumps all over my comment, let me point out that there are many places on planet Earth where the wind never stops, and many of those places are in the USA.
Click this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States
then click on the first graph:
The best wind is Blue (7) Red (6) and Purple (5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States
March 20, 2011 at 2:23 pm
> These solar graphs are impressive but the asterisk indicates they are only projections.
Yes, it is projected current output. It may not be 100% accurate but does provide a good estimation of what is happening right now in Germany.
My projection that they would soon break 10 GW happened quicker than expected – they hit 10.6 GW today!
The strength of renewables is in the complete portfolio and how they compliment each other. E.g. wind is often stronger in the winter when sun is at is weakest. On a hot, sunny, summer day wind is often low.
Build ’em all, build ’em now!
March 19, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Thanks for pointing this out, it is a great time for some emphasis on the positives of wind. There have been complaints a plenty recently about localized flicker and noise. Let’s put those in perspective. Time for a crock of the week maybe on those.
March 19, 2011 at 7:15 pm
already done.
March 19, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Peter, looks like my last comment went off to the spam bin. Can you set it free? 🙂
March 19, 2011 at 8:18 pm
done
April 17, 2011 at 4:45 pm
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June 30, 2011 at 2:55 pm
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August 8, 2011 at 5:24 pm
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