(Archived Article) Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover

The contents of this post were gleaned from a New York Times article with the above title.  The original article was published August 9, 2010.

Five years ago, the leaders of Portugal decided to harness the country’s wind, hydropower, sunlight, and ocean waves.

Nearly 45% of the electricity in Portugal’s grid will come from renewable sources this year, up from 17% just five years ago.

Land-based wind power has expanded sevenfold in that time.  And Portugal expects in 2011 to become the first country to inaugurate a national network of charging stations for electric cars.

Portugal has little fossil fuel of its own.

Portugal participates in the European Union’s version of cap and trade.

Portuguese households have long paid about twice what Americans pay for electricity.

To force Portugal’s energy transition, the prime minister’s government restructured and privatized former state energy utilities to create a grid better suited to renewable power sources.  To lure private companies into Portugal’s new market, the government gave them contracts locking in a stable price for 15 years.

Portugal has large untapped resources of wind and river power, the two most cost-effective renewable sources.

While the government estimates that the total investment in revamping Portugal’s energy structure will be about 16.3 billion euros, that cost is borne by the private companies that operate the grid and the renewable plants and is reflected in consumers’ electricity rates.  The companies’ payback comes from the 15 years of guaranteed wholesale electricity rates promised by the government.  Once the new infrastructure is completed, it is expected that the system will cost about 1.7 billion euros a year less to run than if formerly did, primarily by avoiding natural gas imports.

To ensure a stable power base when the forces of nature shut down, the system needs to maintain a base of fossil fuel that can be fired up at will.

Portugal began upgrading its grid of transmission lines a decade ago.  Accommodating a greater share of renewable power cost an additional 480 million euros, an expense folded into electricity rates.

Environmental and conservation groups are concerned about the effects of so many new wind turbines and dams on wildlife and habitat.

Renewable energy has not created many green jobs.

(Archived Article) Wind Turbine Projects Run Into Resistance

This post summarizes an interesting New York Times article with the above title that was published on or about September 9, 2010. (When I download an article from my Kindle to my computer, the date recorded is the date of the download, not the date of publication.)

Although this article did not contain many of the numbers that I am so fond of, it still highlighted a problem that does not receive much discussion.  People interested in the proper siting of wind turbines should take note.

BARSTOW, Calif. — The United States military has found a new menace hiding here in the vast emptiness of the Mojave Desert in California: wind turbines.

Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely.

Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots.

Although the military says no serious incidents have yet occurred because of the interference, the wind turbines pose an unacceptable risk to training, testing and national security in certain regions, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense, recently told a House Armed Services subcommittee.

Because of its concerns, the Defense Department has emerged as a formidable opponent of wind projects in direct conflict with another branch of the federal government, the Energy Department, which is spending billions of dollars on wind projects as part of President Obama’s broader effort to promote renewable energy.

Eliminating turbine clutter on radar is complicated. Part of the challenge is that many radar systems in use in the United States date back to the 1950s and have outdated processing capabilities — in some cases, less than those of a modern laptop computer.

While there are technology fixes to ease interference on these aging systems, it can be tricky to filter out just the turbines.

On radar, “a wind turbine can look like a 747 on final approach,” said Peter Drake, technical director at Raytheon, a major provider of radar systems. “We don’t want to have the software eliminate a real 747.”

The Energy Department says the problem should be solvable through new technologies.