Wind Becomes Spain's Biggest Energy Source

Wind energy is a poor source of power. First of all they need backup 24/7 from some other source of power. Second they create CO2 emissions by their construction and destruction of the environment, bird and bat life and worst of all the noise they make and the fact when on fire produce toxic fumes. If you want to live with the health effects of them then I suppose you do not mind being woken at night with noise, driven mad through the day with flicker and if living in an area where it snows the blades throw off ice. Over 44 workers have been killed and over 14 passerbys. Anyone who is for wind turbines needs to read about the problems associated with them and the numbers of groups worldwide that are totally against them. Bring on Solar, Geothermal, gas anything except wind turbines. Have a look at Hawaii and the old ones that no one has bothered to remove and see how pitiful the landscape looks. Go stay with the family in California affected by the toxic fumes.They are not 'green' but environmental vandals.

Anyhow ,wind energy electricity production do save 250 milliones de euros to the Spanish budget ,that is very much in the red and could use that help
Wind Energy is a very good ,clean and cost efective way to produce electricity and we can not wait for the rest of Europe and World countries to follow,specially now when electric cars are starting to pop all over the World
If i were part of OPEC or ''Big Oil'' investor would be very much against it as well...

This is a most misleading, if interesting, article. Let's start with the headline. Electricity is not Spain's only energy vector, so the headline should read "Wind becomes Spain's biggest electricity source" for one month. That is a great achievement by RED Eléctrica.

However, having achieved a 31% capacity factor during March 2010, one is naturally curious about the previous 11 months.

A pie chart with negative slices in a technical article is a disgrace. It appears that exports and pumped hydro were needed on quite a large scale to balance the windpower. A stacked bar chart would have been helpful and a more accurate way of visualizing the electricity balance.

Translating "combustibles fósiles" as oil was extremely sloppy as there is no oil capacity (in the pie chart) so no oil was saved. This raises questions about which "combustibles fósiles" (coal and gas) were saved and in turn how the monetary saving was calculated. As oil or coal/gas?

The achievement of RED Eléctrica in balancing so much wind power for one month should not be under-estimated of course but this mindless hymn of praise with its sloppy reporting does the wind power industry no favours at all.

Sorry to be such a grinch! Hugh Sharman www.DimWatt.eu

THEY NEED TO ADD MEDIUM WIND TO THE EQUATION. WWW.BUILDINGTURBINES.COM OUT OF U.S.A. TEXAS...IS CATCHING ON FAST IN URBAN AREAS. LOOK EM UP ON THE WEBSITE..IT USES THE VORTEX CREATED AS THE WIND COMES OVER THE TOP OF COMMERCIAL BUILDING ROOF. WE ARE CONSIDERING THEIR PRODUCT FOR SEVERAL APPLICATIONS.

To replace coal with natural gas, combined-cycle turbines may be more effective than the combination of wind and the much less efficient open-cycle turbines necessary for quick response to wind's variability.

Eitehr way, this is impressive. Spain is showing how much wind can be integrated into the system. If they can operate year in and year our with 25% + wind, surely 50% intermittancy is possible.

Natural gas can act as the battery backup and that 12% coal can head towards zero.

Que bueno!

@pantha - Which would call into question the claims of fossil fuel and CO2 savings.

@ Pantha
if you follow the link in the article you can then get to the Red Electrica's English translation of the original media release, which has the pie chart that isn't in this article. The pie chart shows 17.3% generation from hydro and a -1.6% cost of pumped hydro. But it doesn't say whether the 1.6% was the gross energy used to pump the water up, or the net cost of the round trip. Assuming say an 85% round trip efficiency, if the 1.6% is gross then you get about 1.4% pumped hydro, if it's net then you get about 10%.

I assume that Spain's large amount of hydro generation is what was used to complement the intermittent nature of wind generation. Does anyone know how much is run of river hydro and how much is pumped storage hydro?

Spain is achieving great results. For a country, investing in renewables is a way forward to become more independent from foreign energy sources.
Conversely, the UK (the country where I live) has not done enough in this regard, as I pointed out in this article: http://zeroemissionproject.com/blog/article/48/oil-price-is-rising-as-is-uk-s-dependency-on-foreign-energy-sources

Lorenzo

Thanks, Anne_van_der_Bom. Pretty sloppy retelling here, especially without providing a link to the source:

"Además, gracias a la eólica este mes se han evitado transferencias de rentas al extranjero por valor de unos 250 millones de euros, como consecuencia de las importaciones de combustibles fósiles y de las emisiones de CO2 evitadas. En total, la eólica evitó la emisión de 1,7 millones de toneladas de CO2 en marzo, el equivalente a plantar 850.000 árboles."

That doesn't seem to be actual data, though.

Yes. Wind Energy progress in Spain has been spectacular and it occupies fourth position in the world.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

Rucio,

They don't claim that. The translation is inaccurate. If you read the press release here: http://www.aeeolica.es/ you can see they talk about 'importaciones de combustibles fósiles', which means 'imports of fossil fuels'.

Thanks, Anne_van_der_Bom. I didn't notice the graphic, as it is in the sidebar like an ad or "social web" app.

I still wonder, like the unnamed anonymous poster after me, why they claim to have lowered their oil-import bill.

Rucio,

If you look at the pie chart, you can see that the text did not mention all sources. There is also 15% cogeneration and 17.2% natural gas.

The author writes: ""As parks spun their blades, the country saved €250m by lowering its oil-import bill. It also saved 1.7m tonnes of CO2," according to Spain's Wind Industry Association AEE."

The pie chart listing all production sources shows so oil based generation and presumably this isn't any appreciable oil usage even in bad wind months so how did this "saved €250m" claim get justified?

Steven

The figures for all sources total only 72.8%. Did Spain import 27.2% of their electricity in March? What about natural gas?