The long and windy road to solve energy production

A turbine blade towering 400 feet into the air turns as a 30-mile-per-hour wind powers its movement through the sky; it is one in a field of turbines resting in the channel separating Sweden and Denmark. The field, a $280 million wind park built by Swedish power company Vattenfall, can generate enough power to light 60,000 nearby homes.



As promising as it sounds, however, wind parks like these are no longer considered a smooth solution to producing ecologically sound power. They are now coming under scrutiny by energy experts.

The wind is incapable of always correlating with people’s demands for electricity, and for the coasts where energy is most needed, turbine fields would need to be located much closer. This doesn’t fly so well for places like the United States where the best breezes are caught mid-country.

Denmark, Europe’s pioneer of wind energy, has experienced a drop in wind farm growth. Ireland had to postpone connecting their wind farms to the electricity grid because of power surge strains in 2003. And in the United States, residents of areas chosen as wind park sites continue to protest their construction, often for aesthetic reasons. One of these sites is located in Nantucket Sound, where it has drawn protests from even the Kennedy family.

“The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions claim. You’ve still got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants,” said Euan C. Blauvelt, the research director of ABS Energy Research from London.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/business/23wind.html?pagewanted=2&ref=environment