OPINION: An engineer looks at wind, solar and climate change

Not sure about you, but I hear things on the news about climate change, using green energy and CO2. Also there seems to be a big push to get us into the green energy arena.

Lots of one-sided comments have been made about the actual costs of production of electricity. The thing to remember when reading these reports is who is writing them and what is the reason for them to come out with this information? Several folks have made comments in the area newspapers and suggest that wind and solar are the way to go and the sooner we can shut down the coal-fired generation plants the better off we will be.

When reading this remember — follow the money.

Point one: Solar is only available during the time the sun can hit a solar panel. If it is daytime and there is a cloud or bad weather in the way, there will be no power generated.

Point two: Wind generation has it problems also as there is no power generated when there is no wind. In general overall the amount of power generated by wind for the entire United States is around 17 percent of the time. This is referred to as the amount of time it is utilized. Also there seems to be lots of birds and bats that lose their lives around a wind generator.

Point three: When either of the above are producing power they can place that power on the grid and others have to back off. That is just one of the things these folks have that is in their corner. If they can just place power on the grid at times when they have power available there is no need to have contracts to provide power like the coal-fired plants.

That means that they do not have to go out and purchase power to maintain their contacts, like when there is no wind. Plus they have lots of subsidies that give them money to erect, install and operate wind and solar generation. If the green energy group were to work on the same level as the coal power generation, there would be no debate on this subject.

There was a note about when one of the Colstrip units went down for some six months. The question was who will pay all the costs of getting that unit back on line. Yes, this is part of the operation costs of the plant. So what happens when one of the wind generators needs some major work done? The cost of getting one of the cranes just to the site and start working is $400,000. That is just the IN charge and getting ready to work. So who would pay that cost? Who will pay the cost of removing them when at the end of their life?

The coal-fired plant in Colstrip can produce power for about $35/megawatt. If the wind generation were on the same playing field, they would need to get a contract with someone to purchase that power, just like the owners of the electrical companies. When the wind is not there they would need to purchase power from someone to make up the contract amount, so they would need to contract power for about $75/megawatt. But the part we do not see or hear about is the subsidies that come to them around the horn or from the supplier of the equipment and assembly of the generation farms. That would bring the cost to the taxpayers to around $170/megawatt.

When wind and solar do have a good day and producing power to the grid, the coal-fired plants back off and keep the grid stable. What this does is cause thermal stress in the coal-fired boiler/turbine areas. Yes, that does cost more for the plant to maintain. Also there are more costs related to the regulations related to CO2, mercury, etc.

Now for the real news about CO2 and after some research I found the following about this gas.

First is a principle about gases called the Brownian Movement. This is where a gas will dissipate equally in a given volume that is available to it. If you are in your garage and start up your car the gases from the car will fill the garage, but this will lower the percentage of oxygen for one to maintain life and we all know the results of that. On the other hand the volume of atmospheric gases is tremendous and CO2 is very small in the overall atmosphere. Again if the amount of CO2 or any other gas were to expand to the point that oxygen percentage decreased, we would all have problem breathing.

If we use a football field as a reference to the amount of gases in the atmosphere, we have the following as a comparison:

Nitrogen is 78 percent or 78 yards in a football field.

Oxygen is 21 percent or 21 yards

Argon is 0.9 percent or 32.4 inches.

When you add up all these we get 99.9 percent (99 yards and 32.4 inches) with all the remaining gasses in the 0.1 percent (3.6 inches).

CO2 is overall 0.04 percent or 1.44 inches and CO2 coming from generation is mentioned on several web sites at 40 percent of that or about 0.6 inches in the football field.

The thing to remember here is if there were too much CO2 in the atmosphere, then that would decrease the amount of oxygen and we need to have about 21 percent oxygen to maintain human life. CO2 is absorbed by both land-based plants and the seas.

If there were in actuality more CO2 added into the atmosphere, then all the plant life would actually grow faster and bigger. There are several things that are not reported in the different web sites one would visit while trying to research this topic, which are the natural forest fires especially in the West and Northwest United States. This year, we have about 500,000 acres that have burned up, and then three years ago we had the same amount in Montana. Another one that is not reported is the constant volcanoes that are erupting around the world and then there are the 7 billion people on the earth all breathing at the same time.

It is a little hard to believe that coal-fired generation, a drop in the bucket, can change the weather when we have forest fires and volcanoes producing lots more CO2. But then when you look at several of the web sites, they proclaim that forest fires and volcanoes are part of the natural system.

Overall the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is minimal but it is an important part of the cycle of life on earth.

A good web site for more info on wind power: http://stopthesethings.com/

Another good web site for all of the above: http://energyink.us/

Sterrett, of Colstrip, is a retired mechanical engineer.