In reply to Jones Beene's message of Wed, 26 Jul 2017 19:21:03 -0700: Hi, [snip] >On average, wind requires about 200 times as much steel and concrete >structural material as a natural gas turbine plant of the same capacity. >Factoid: a two-megawatt (faceplate) wind turbine weighs about 250 tons >(or more), including the tower, nacelle, generator housing and blades, >but it only works near full capacity about 40% of the time. It requires >about half a ton of coal to make a ton of steel. Add another 25 tons of >coal used in making the cement to secure the tower against strong gales >- and in the end, youre talking 150 tons of coal used per real MWhr of
I think you mean MW not MWHr. MW implies that the 150 tons of coal is spread over the lifetime of the wind tower (which it is), whereas MWHr implies that 150 tons of coal is consumed for every 1/2 hour that the tower produces 2 MW (which it obviously isn't). You only get a true comparison of these things when you calculate total usage over the lifetime of a system, divided by that lifetime. Clearly a coal burning power plant will use vastly more coal over its lifetime than a wind tower of the same capacity. The same is true of gas fired plants, if you look at CO2 production over the lifetime of the plant. >capacity for the structure. And the ash from the coal used to make the >wind turbine is more radioactive than nuclear waste - see: [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
