Land area required to generate electricity (Bonne Posma, Jon Boone, John Droz) USofA

LAND AREA REQUIRED TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY Bonne Posma, Chairman, Nuclear Africa (Pty) ltd 27 September, 2018 South Africa’s recent IRP energy mix projections for 2030 include 11.4 GW wind, 8 GW solar PV, and 4.7 GW hydro . It is anticipated that wind and solar will provide 25% of our electrical energy requirements, with gas, coal, hydro and nuclear providing another 70 %.

Both wind and solar will require immense areas of land: Wind: 625 km2 per GW Solar: 36 km2 per GW In comparison, Coal, Nuclear and Gas will require less than 2 km2 per GW Figure 1: Land area requirement for wind

Jeffreys Bay Wind farm’s annual electric energy supplied to Eskom is claimed to be 460,000 MWh. The combined nameplate rating of the 60 wind turbines is 138 MW and if these were running at that output for an entire year, it would amount to 1,208,00 MWh. But if we look at the electrical energy actually produced, divided by the energy that could be produced if the wind turbines ran continuously at their name plate rating, we obtain the capacity factor (CF) . The CF of the Jeffreys Bay Wind Farm is therefore 0.38, and the average or effective output is only 52.4 MW.

1

These 60 turbines are located on 3 700 ha (37 km2 ) of land , and 71.1 ha land is therefore required for every effective MW of electric power. Scaling this up, 711 km2 land would therefore be required for every GW of electric power generated by wind.

The American Wind Energy Association has a list of the areas associated with existing wind farms. They show a range of land usage of 25 to 125 acres per installed MW. This report also emphasized that the actual average output was 25% of nameplate, corresponding to 400 km2 to 2,000 km2 per average GW output.

The US NERL issued a report in August 2009, on the land area occupied by 80% of US wind farms and summarized land use of 85 acres/Name plate MW. That works out to 1360 km2 per average GW output.

In my projections, I have used an optimistic 625 km2 per GW instead of 711 km2 per GW at Jeffreys Bay. Germany has some of the most advanced wind energy technology in the world. In 2017, their 56,000 MW of installed (nameplate rating) turbines produced 107,000 GWh of electricity – yielding a Capacity Factor of only 0.21. In other words, their average, effective electric wind energy output for 2017 was only 22.7 GW. During January 2017, Germany experienced a week of almost no wind and these mighty turbines provided only 117 MW yielding a CF of only 0.2 %.

It is unlikely that South Africa has many areas with the excellent wind conditions of Jeffreys Bay. If we assume a CF of 0.25, then South Africa will require installed capacity of 45.6 GW to yield the IRP’s projection of 11.4 GW of electricity from wind energy in 2030.

To illustrate the enormous amount of land required to produce 11.4 GW of effective electrical energy, 7,125 km2, the distance between Cape Town and Pretoria is 1500 km, and a corridor 4.75 km of land for wind turbines would be required to produce that amount of electrical energy if the optimistic CF of 0.25 were achievable. (See Figure 2)

2

Figure 2: Wind Turbine Corridor required for 11,400 MW of Wind Power

But more important is the quality of the electrical power produced. Unlike a coal, gas or nuclear power plant, whose outputs are stable and predictable, a wind farm only produces electrical power when the wind blows, and that can vary from minute to minute. If electrical power from windfarms constitutes more than 10% of the system’s total electrical generating capacity, very expensive stand-by gas- or dieselpowered generators will be required. That expense will be borne by Eskom, who will recover their costs from their customers. Say goodbye to low electricity tariffs!

The following questions should be answered before South Africa commits to 15% of its electrical energy to be provided by wind mills: -

-

-

-

-

Who will pay for back-up generating capacity ?

Who will pay for access roads, land servitude fees and associated infrastructure maintenance ?

How will copper theft be controlled ?

Have environmental impacts such as the effect on rainfall and overall climate been considered if wind patterns are disrupted when huge amounts of energy are withdrawn from the atmosphere to power windmills?

It is likely that wind mills will cause the slaughter of millions of large birds such as eagles and vultures – economist Rob Jeffrey has estimated bird deaths at 4 birds per installed MW per year. The planned 11.4 GW (45.6 GW nameplate) would therefore cause the demise of 182,000 birds per year. Has the annihilation of birds of prey in large areas of South Africa been considered?

3

-

NOTE: The following comments were based on the original article. It has been revised to address these comments. Nevertheless, these comments are important to keep in mind anyway.

COMMENT 1: Jon Boone, wind energy expert - USA Your assertion that a certain number of wind machines can produce equivalent power yields to that of conventional generation is untrue. At a basic level of consideration, wind cannot produce modern firm capacity power. Beyond this, it should be obvious that mathematical equivalence is not the same as functional equivalence. Wind’s variable flutter produces electricity as the result of the cube of the wind speed within a narrow wind speed range; any yield is always changing in geometric ebbs and flows—always destabilizing the requisite match between supply and demand. Of course, about twenty percent of the time, it produces nothing.

In reality, no amount of zero capacity wind machines spread over every inch of land and water can FUNCTIONALLY replace any high capacity conventional generator.

Yes, we must ridicule the truly ridiculous bloviation for so-called renewables. But we must also get behind John’s trenchant call to challenge the persistent fear mongering that has nearly entombed intelligent deployment of nuclear technology.

COMMENT 2: John Droz, wind energy expert - USA 1) It is very unlikely that a land-based wind project will have a Capacity Factor of 38%. It’s more likely to be 30%±.

2) At whatever the CF is, multiplying it by the faceplate does NOT make it equivalent to a nuclear facility. In other words, 100 GWH supplied by wind ≠

4

100 GWH supplied by nuclear. This is a fundamental and critical difference between the two.

Wind promoters would like us to believe that there is some type of “equivalency” between intermittent and conventional electrical energy source — but that is simply not so.

A good analogy would be to say that a business needs to make weekly cross-country shipments of their products. Right now they fill an 18-wheeler, and (like a nuclear facility) it performs quickly, reliably, and economically.

The wind energy equivalent in this analogy is to substitute electric golf carts (i.e. turbines) for the 18-wheeler: both are road-worthy types of transportation. The question is: How many golf carts would it take to equal the timing, reliability and economics of a single 18wheeler?

The answer is: no number of golf carts (not 10, or 100, or 10,000, or 10 million) would equal the performance and economics of a single 18-wheeler.

Likewise, no number of wind turbines (not 1000, or 10,000, or 1 million) would equal the performance and economics of a single nuclear facility.

Therefore a land comparison is simple not possible.

COMMENT 3: Eric Jelinski, nuclear and wind energy expert – Canada The wind does not blow all of the time at any geographical location, and also the energy from wind varies dramatically as the cube of the speed of the wind, and there is a dropout wind speed below which wind turbines won’t generate because of ‘friction’ losses.

Some try to envisage a wind to electric generating system by having perhaps thousands of wind turbines all over the continent connected by copper or aluminium cables to connect them all to all of the users, and then use some batteries….not a hope in hell because of economics and reliability, and also electrical system stability, and the larger the storage batteries the costs are prohibitive.

Nuclear electricity is generated from the energy stored in atoms that we know but is often not well enough explained to the public. That energy is the binding energy of the atom, ie the energy that was necessary to form the atom, that energy is release when splitting heavy atoms (fission) or fusing light atoms (fusion) and that energy can be calculated by examining the specific nuclear reaction equation, and calculating the difference in mass between left side and right side of the equation and multiplying by the speed of light squared. Thus the energy from a nuclear reactor comes from stored energy of the atoms, not some fluctuating and uncontrollable phenomenon such as wind or solar affected by clouds and day/night. That is why nuclear can exactly match the power requirements of customers without any further 5

battery storage except for laptop computers and phones, basically small point of use devices owned by the customer. The stability of nuclear electric power arises two fold: distance between nuclear station and the cities using the power is managed by design by doing power system stability analysis, and stability is further enhanced by the inertia (rotating mass) of the large electric generators. Thus when customers switch on their coffee makers and toasters in the morning, they don’t have to wait for the wind to blow or the sun to shine or worry whether the battery bank is low from lack of overnight wind… the instantaneous energy for all appliances turned on comes from the inertia of the generators that is set to be controlled to 1800 rpm (usually), a tiny reduction in speed is sensed by the control system, and that causes the governor valve on the turbine to admit more steam, and that control cascades back to the reactor to fission more atoms. Likewise hydraulic gates on dams can also be opened, and in addition firing up coal or gas plants. This is proven technology and works reliably all over the world.

Merchant ships were first to stop using wind power (sails) switching to steam engines, and later Diesel and nuclear ships and submarines for reliability, economics and endurance. Yes, wind is still used for sailing…recreational activity, not for any other reason. No business entity designs and builds a retail, wholesale, or condos or hotel chain, or manufacturing plant that is powered by a wind turbine….nobody has ever done that for the purpose of investing money to make money….wind power is not worth thinking about.

Sincerely, Eric Jelinski M. Eng. P. Eng.

"The Future is Nuclear"

Past President, EFN-Canada, ENVIRONMENTALISTS FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY (CANADA) INC. eric_jelinski@sympatico.ca

Toronto, Ontario, Canada 6

The primary energy sources in Ontario, Switzerland and France are nuclear and hydro. Other countries have predominantly fossil fuels with a mix of nuclear and hydro. These are outstanding energy systems. Many countries with more than 50% hydro suffer in periods of low rainfall and drought.

Ontario:

population 13.6 million,

62.9% nuclear and 27.1% hydro

Switzerland: population 8.4 million,

33.5% nuclear and 59.9% hydro

France:

75% nuclear and

population 66.9 million,

15% hydro

COMMENT 4: John Shanahan, civil engineer, President, Environmentalists for Nuclear - USA No country has solved all the problems of grid management for wind and solar in routine daily and seasonal variations of weather. No country has solved all the problems of grid management and equipment maintenance and repair for extremes of weather: rain, snow, hail, ice, hurricane strength winds, earthquakes, and prolonged periods of extreme heat and cold. These require vast numbers of trained repair crews for damaged or otherwise out of service wind turbines and solar panels.

Some of these problems have been solved when the percentage of energy from wind and solar was small compared to availability of energy from fossil fuel back up. It has not been solved when percentage of wind and solar energy is large compared to back up from fossil fuels.

Modern living depends on reliable electrical energy supply all the time.

Continuous, long term reliable energy supply from very large wind and solar installations is not a sure thing for all the variations in weather and climate in the long term.

Nuclear power plants, and to a certain extent fossil fuel plants, are designed for many of these situations. Everyone’s standard of living and lives are more at risk from use of large scale application of wind and solar energy. Previous comments make very clear that wind and solar should never be used. See excellent articles by these experts at the hotlinks on their names.

7