Vestas and Orsted warn of tough times for renewable energy; Sector hit by low wind speeds, supply...

[NNadir]

...challenges.


From here: Vestas and Orsted warn of tough times for renewable energy.

Sub title: Sector hit by low wind speeds, supply chain blockages and higher raw material prices.

Danish power group Orsted and wind turbine maker Vestas have warned of challenging conditions in renewable energy after projects in Europe suffered low wind speeds and as supply chain hold-ups and rising costs hit manufacturers.

Vestas warned on Wednesday of an “increasingly challenging global business environment for renewables” as it cut its full-year operating profit margin forecast for the second time this year.

Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, said it had taken a DKr2.5bn ($389m) hit from lower wind speeds in the first nine months of this year compared with 2020 as it reiterated expectations its 2021 profits would come in at the lower end of a guided range. Its third-quarter operating profits were also slightly below analysts’ estimates.

The relatively downbeat assessments came a day after global leaders at COP26 in Glasgow cited clean energy technologies as critical to meeting goals to curb global warming.

The intermittency of renewables such as wind power has come into focus in Europe in recent months as some of the slowest wind speeds in decades have exacerbated a reliance on gas and coal for electricity — including in the UK, the world’s biggest offshore wind market...

...and this...

US and European benchmark prices for steel, which makes up more than 70 per cent of a wind turbine by weight, have surged 86 per cent and 53 per cent respectively this year.

Steel, of course, is made by heating iron ore with coke. Coke is made by heating anthracite coal with coal heat.

The average lifetime of a wind turbine, based on calculations one can make by downloading *CSV files of the Danish Energy Agency's Master Data Register of Wind Turbines is well under 20 years.

Have a pleasant work week.

[Eko]

1. Apparently the steel and concrete used by nuclear plants for some reason

does not have a supply chain problem and is immune to the price surges. Also they don't suffer from cost over runs. Thank god they don't need chips since they are in short supply. Nice to know.

[NNadir]

4. To succeed at sarcasm, in general, one must have wit.

If on the other hand, one is witless, one can always use as emoji to attempt to cover one's self, albeit without any reasonable expectation of being taken seriously.

Emojis are popular here and often outweigh facts.

To my way of thinking, anyone who attempts to compare the mass to energy efficiency of wind turbines say, in California, where they are spread on well over 1500 square miles, with say, the mass intensity of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which regularly produces more power than all the wind turbines in California on a twelve acre footprint is almost certainly witless.

As far as it goes in my opinion, this level of wit is worthy of Donald Trump Jr., who also considers himself a wit despite the fact his efforts to display his self declared wit reveal him to be a fool.

[Eko]

5. That sounds like an interesting conversation.

Can you show it to us? I would like to see it.

[NNadir]

6. I'm pretty much done trying to reason with rote anti-nukes. The age of antivaxxers led me...

Last edited Thu Nov 11, 2021, 08:53 AM - Edit history (4)

...finally to understand the power, as well as the more obvious danger, of deliberate ignorance which no amount of information, no compilation of facts, can change.

To what end would one succeed at arguing with an anti-vax that Bill Gates is not really putting microchips in vaccines?

This report, Practical handling of allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines (Klimek, L., Bergmann, KC., Brehler, R. et al. Allergo J Int 30, 79–95 (2021)) published April just past, reports this:

From December 14 to December 23, 2020, a total of 4393 (0.2%) adverse events were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following administration of 1,893,360 initial doses of BNT162b2 vaccine. Among these, 175 case reports were identified for further review as possible cases of severe allergic reaction, including anaphylaxis, based on description of signs and symptoms. The report notes that 21 of these cases met the case definition criteria for anaphylaxis, representing an estimated rate of 11.1 cases per 1 million doses administered.

One can only imagine what an anti-vax Trumper could do with the use of the internet and the details of just one of the 21 cases described that met the criterion of anaphylaxis.

Nevertheless, vaccines save lives on a scale of tens of millions, ultimately hundreds of millions.

Because air pollution kills people - more people in fact than Covid has ever come close to killing - nuclear power saves lives.

But...but...but...FUKUSHIMA?

Really?

I will have been writing at DU 19 years as of this month. I know I have convinced a few people to change their minds about nuclear energy, but what's left is, to my mind, beyond hope.

I spent too much time writing here. The up side is that doing the background research for my posts was a mechanism for learning new things. For example, confronting a fool who carried on about a collapsed tunnel at Hanford led me to look into the geochemistry of plutonium and technetium. Of course, I already knew a lot about these subjects, but I learned more in the process of looking into this silly event, on which vast sums of money were spent to save zero lives. The money was spent to assuage ignorance, and nothing else.

One can always learn more about any subject, with the caveat that what one learns is often depressing.

I have a 22 year old son whose academic career in Materials Science Engineering has been close to spectacular thus far. He announced recently - I am deeply honored - his intention to pursue his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. As I've spent more than 30 years deeply invested in the subject, even though I am not a nuclear professional, I am aware of many excellent ideas that were lost, and have had many ideas that I believe may have been missed.

If the world is to be saved, and it may not be, nuclear engineers will save it. Fathers are always proud of their sons, but my pride may be far deeper. How is my time better spent to fulfill my responsibility to the world, writing here or writing to my son?

I will probably write a valedictory post on DU in which I will discuss the disturbing data from California's very detailed CAISO website in which I will compare the output of Diablo Canyon with all the wind turbines in California, commenting perhaps on the very important issue in climate change of land and mass intensity. But it will go nowhere here.

Of course, anyone who actually gave a shit could look at the CAISO website themselves, and do as I did, download the data files over a period of time to understand the trends, and count the number of periods that Diablo Canyon was producing more electricity than all the wind turbines in California. These figures are readily available at high resolution, nearly continuous, the resolution being five minutes over a period of months.

But people don't give a shit. They just shout through their ignorance with the same tired rhetoric that was stupid when I was shouting it (before Chernobyl), was stupid in 2011 and is stupid now.

Mostly we are old people here, and what we have done with the world is obvious. While crowing about how solar and wind are great and - as bourgeois materialists have claimed in a fit of delusion that they are "cheap" - we have left a world where as of April 2021, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide, which is literally killing people and in fact killing the planet, broke 420 ppm.

When I started writing here, the week beginning Nov. 24, 2002, that concentration was 372.68 ppm. There is no value in any conversation I may hold here. I keep track of data.

The anti-nukes have won. Diablo Canyon will close, with California having written into to law that methane is carbon free.

420 ppm, and now the laws of chemistry are being changed by legislation. Galileo should roll in his grave.

Congrats to all the anti-nukes, they have triumphed...420 ppm.

Life is absurd, and then you die.

Have a nice day.

[Eko]

7. Ive said it many, many , many times I am not anti-nuke.

I think nuclear is going to have a large role in saving us from climate change (if its even possible now) and may be the only thing that does. And yes "FUKUSHIMA". I brought that up when you said solar was so dangerous to show that nuclear was also, and for the same reason I brought up Hanford. That's it. From there I became anti-nuke to you and you started to insult me when I had done nothing of the sort to you. You are absolutely unreasonable and quite rude. Even now you have created a fake argument that we have never had to insult me more. "anyone who attempts to compare the mass to energy efficiency of wind turbines say, in California, where they are spread on well over 1500 square miles, with say, the mass intensity of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which regularly produces more power than all the wind turbines in California on a twelve acre footprint is almost certainly witless." Of course in your mind it will be a valedictory post on DU and I will argue against you so you can call me a, what was that? Witless? From an argument we have never had and one which you admit you haven't even written yet right here "I will probably write a valedictory post on DU in which I will discuss the disturbing data from California's very detailed CAISO website in which I will compare the output of Diablo Canyon with all the wind turbines in California, commenting perhaps on the very important issue in climate change of land and mass intensity. But it will go nowhere here."
I don't even have an idea of what mass intensity is let alone be able to argue it with you. I looked it up and all I could find was related to medicine. Not to say its not related to nuclear energy but that I couldn't find where it did so to argue with you over it,,,, would be witless. But I have never done that. And you, I hate to belabor the point again but I feel I must, you used a non-existent argument with me to insult me yet again. And then, beyond that when I asked you to share this non-existent argument with me you admitted, admitted that I had never said the things you said I did,,,,, and then insulted me even more. I hope you are ok because I am increasingly concerned that you are far from ok.
Eko.

[NNadir]

8. Really? You're not an anti-nuke?

Do tell... Wait a minute, don't tell. I couldn't care less.

DU has a "Nuclear Free" group. It doesn't have a "Fossil Fuel Free" group, this with the world aflame and people dying in heat waves in Canada, but it has a "nuclear free" group.

It's populated by the sort of people who would make a weak attempt at sarcasm about the trivial amounts of steel and concrete in nuclear plants, one that I personally found borderline insane, because I know about what I'm talking, since I study material flows extensively. It's part of my regular reading interests.

Ever go over there to that "Nuclear Free" group? Every once in a while, to grasp just how far people can put their heads up their asses, I log off DU and read the tripe over there. I have to log off, because when I'm serious at DU, my ignore list is on. Anyway, the swell people over there, they seem to know you.


Ten Most Radioactive Places on Earth Mapped Out [GRAPHIC]

NeoGreen (3,999 posts)

2. Thanks but credit should go to Eko...

...who posted the link in a reply to another OP:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122853659#post9

Oh, thanks, by the way, for enlightening us with scary photos from the tabloid newspaper, the Mirror, devoid of a single scientific reference, in response to my pictures from one of my OPs referring to a science news article in a prominent scientific journal, Nature. One can find the original article in the tabloid, The Daily Mirror. Not a single fucking scientific reference in it. Zero. Nada. It's sort of like the three headed cow from Three Mile Island. Or maybe it was three headed bull. I forget. It was almost 50 years ago, although from time to time, people still prattle on about it.

For the record, the ocean on this planet contains about 4.5 billion tons of uranium, as part of a continuous cycle through Earth's mantle. If one spent less time at tabloids, and more time in the fucking scientific literature, one could learn all about it. The ocean has contained this uranium pretty much ever since oxygen appeared in the planetary atmosphere, and always will, unless of course, oxygen disappears. The first land animals evolved in the presence of this uranium, and far larger amounts of radioactive potassium. There are literally thousands of scientific papers on the subject of uranium in seawater, maybe tens of thousands, many of which refer to amidoxime resins a subject about which I've read extensively. I'm sure I have downloaded over a hundred such papers and added them to my files.

After the tunnel thing, you remember, that shit about Hanford, I have been spectacularly disinterested in studying every utterance of yet another anti-nuke.

You know, quacks like a duck, has feathers like a duck, waddles like a duck, it's a duck.

Let me say it again: I'm not interested. I don't stay up at night reading through your every utterance to see what you did and didn't say, because, again, I couldn't care less. Most of the time you're on my "ignore list." OK? I've seen enough to form as much of an opinion as I am willing to form.

What exactly is it that you want from me? I couldn't possibly be as interesting as the cartoons over in the "Nuclear Free" group. Hang out over there. They're fun. I'm not. I'm too damned bloody serious. I give more of a shit about climate change more than I do about clowns.

Why do I fucking bother? You won. The world has sunk trillions of dollars more on wind turbines and solar cells in this century than it did on nuclear reactors. Why can't you just be happy with all that winning? You won...420 ppm. Congratulations!

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[Eko]

9. Correct, I am not anti-nuke.

Since you peruse the Nuclear Free group let me ask you, have you ever seen me post there? No? Because I am not anti-nuke. Ive never even looked at the group until tonight when you shared a link with me, because, I am not anti-nuclear. I am not anti any technology, can you say the same thing? No, you cant. Personally I think starting immediately to build 50 new nuclear power plants in our country is a really good idea. Maybe even more. I like solar and wind (as well as nuclear) but I am unsure if the tech and industry will evolve fast enough to save us. We should always have more than one egg in our basket when it comes to this catastrophe that awaits us. Nuclear has problems, solar has problems, wind has problems, anyone can see that. Everything has pros and cons, and pointing out the cons of something doesn't mean you are against that thing, it means you are honest in your support of that thing.I can honestly do that, I just have. Some people live in the world they want, with their biases being the only thing they support, that's you, others live in the world that is and the world they want, that's me. Others live in the world that is, unfortunately there are too many of those. Do you see lots of nuclear power plants going up? Its kinda the opposite isn't it? Reality bites for that unfortunately. Your posts on here are not going to change that. You are like Don Quixote at this point. Why dont you join the club of "Whatever forms of power are going to lower our carbon output so we can live" ? Because right now your club is pretty small and its not making a difference. Its actually getting smaller. Can we build fast ramping nuclear power plants to help when solar and wind drop off? That would be a good post from you. Even if you are 100% correct, public opinion is not with you. No matter how many posts you do filled with scientific information you are not swaying public opinion by insulting everyone who has the same goal as you but thinks there is a different way to get there. Join forces, build bridges, and by all means keep pushing what you think is right. There is a word for people that think only their way is the way, dont be that guy. Thats what I want for you, because you are clearly intelligent in some ways and you could do a lot of good. Instead you are pushing people away, and that is not going to help us at all.
Eko.

[multigraincracker]

2. I know there are problem with all three,but

our future might come down to a Hydrogen, Small Reactors and hemp economy. I think there are solution to all of them.

https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/2021/11/01/6-advantages-of-small-modular-reactors/

6Advantages of Small Modular Rfeactors

Future with Hydrogen
https://www.plugpower.com/hydrogen/hydrogen-adoption/benefits-of-hydrogen-power/

https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=699
Converting Hemp to Fuel

[2naSalit]

3. Point source power generation...

Just a thought whose time is still at hand.