Sweden plans 2,000 wind turbines

They are called wind turbines.

Of course this means they plan to LOWER electricity prices right? My point: "Renewable Energy = Expensive Electricity". When is Sweden going to wise up to the wonders of Natural Gas.

Or a wind farm. For me, this is a good thing. Other countries should use Sweden as an example.

I am glad to see the progress and still call for much more. I see 100% renewable by 2040!

JUST DO IT!!!

parrish the point is that it will be sustainable. Natural gas is a finite resource, which will probably have a production peak not so long after oil production peaks.

Wind power is great, but only if the wind is blowing.

@parrish

UK switched from coal to gas some years ago, and many homes are heated by gas, but UK now has problems.

1. Gas is no longer cheap and is affected by oil prices.

2. UK has to import over 50% of its gas due to gas field running out in North Sea.

3. Most gas comes from Russia, which is an unstable country, and we could be held to ransom like the Arab countries did in the 70's with oil.

4. We have already seen how half of Europe lost its gas supply after a dispute with Ukraine, and these pipelines are also vulnerable to terroist attacks. A UK documentary showed how any disruption in gas supply puipeline could see UK blacked out in hours. It is best to control our own enrgy sources.

I hate to say it, but nuclear power looks like the only relable source, and I really don't like nuclear power.

Sweden needs to look to their east and Finland that is right now building the worlds largest Nuclear Power plants. Wind turbines are completely worthless, its expensive, destroys the enviroment. The biggest problem with Wind energy is that it is not sustainable, it is unpredictable(you dont know when it is going to be windy). Also, wind energy can not be stored to be used later. It could be windy in the middle of the night(and then it is all wasted) and no wind during the day(when you need it). The reason OIL, GAS and NUCLEAR is the only solution is that it can be used when you need it.Nuclear is the cleanest of the 3, so it is the only viable solution until Fusion energy comes along.

Stop wasting taxpayers money on childrens experiements

Excellent - hopefully Sweden can eventually get rid of those dangerous nuke plants.

I would like to make the following statements on the comments made above:

(1) Re: Glempa. Think of wind power with other sources of power; when there is a decline in wind power the other sources kick in and prevent interruption in the flow electricity.

(2) Re: Glaciator. The "greenest" country in the world is Germany.

(3) Re Russia: Please know that Western economy would need oil for several decades. The question is where should they get it? Russia has been a reliable source of oil to Europe even during the height of the cold war. Capitalist Russia, which is eager to integrate itself with the world economy, is eager to sell its oil. The problem we have in our hands is the cold war mentality has not subsided in the western countries. In Ukraine's case what Russia demanded is full pay for oil that Ukraine received while Ukraine wanted to have over 50% discount - i.e., keep the Soviet era trade relations. If Russia had continued yield to Ukraine's demand, it would have foregone billions of dollars per year, more than twice what the US gives its close ally Israel. Instead of bargaining for a gradual increase, Ukraine tried to shame Russia (play a dirty politics) and cold war warriors from both and USA and UK went along without rewarding Ukraine for its hostile behavior towards Russia. The most unreliable sources of oil supply for Europe are Middle East and Central Asian countries. Besides Russia's oil supply is larger than all the Middle East countries combined. I think Europe should continue to have oil from Russia unless it plans to go to war with it, which I think is suicidal and stupid.

You guys also might want to check out the much hyped "Bloom Boxes" that are currently powering a lot of big boys (like eBay/Google/Fedex/Walmarts etc)

Glempa the wind is always blowing somewhere. Denmark is a small country and they're doing fine with wind power.

RBA...check your facts about Denmark doing fine with windpower...i think you will find they come up short on what they realistically expected. Windpower alone is not enough.

Audrian; tottally agree. Dont know why people still have a wasp up their arse about Russia. Its not soviet union anymore. Move on!

With todays energy needs,nuclear is still the best option. Unless of course you want to go back to burning wood...but then you wouldnt be able to watch your plasma screen tv and play X box etc. Dont forget,if you increase your consumption by buying all these toys,then the market needs to supply electric.....

hjoian wind power is not supposed to replace all the other power sources.

I never saw any indication that Denmark was disappointed with it as you said. About one quarter of their electricity comes from wind power. Last year they also inaugurated the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Apart from the nice looking message it would be also good to see some facts:

- how much will that cost compared to building nuclear plants with the same power,

- who will pay for that (electricity price increased?)

- how will the extra power be used - some existing power sources will be shut down?

- how much fossil fuels and other resources are consumed when building such wind farms

- what is the plan to deal with necessary variations of energy supply from wind farms - how the energy distribution network will be upgraded, how big supply variations can it sustain now

Sweden is already 33% renewables, my bet is they are 33% hydro, so getting by 50%, I don't know.

It's been 10 years since we started renewables, give us another 10 years and we'll be in touch with the reality of renewables, we'll see.

CarlBlack:

> how much will that cost compared to building nuclear plants with the same power,

According to what I've read, wind power capacity costs about $1000 per kW to install. So if the wind is only blowing 20% of the time, this gives an effective cost of $5000 per kW.

Nuclear is a bit cheaper, $2500 - $5000 but it has higher running costs (nuclear fuel is a running cost, as well as a lot of maintenance and safety inspections which are not necessary with wind power).

> how much fossil fuels and other resources are consumed when building such wind farms

That is included in the above estimates. Suffice to say that the building costs are easily recouped through the lifetime of a wind mill.

> - what is the plan to deal with necessary variations of energy supply from wind farms

If you look at the Danish example, what they do is exchange power with Norway, Sweden and Germany.

Norway and Sweden have a lot of hydro power, what happens is that when the wind is blowing in Denmark the water at the Norwegian and Swedish dams gets saved. When the wind is blowing less, Norwegian and Swedish dams work extra to make up the difference. It's also possible to accumulate wind energy into hydro energy, by pumping water uphill to use up the extra energy (hydro dams already do this during low-consumption periods).

This is good news.

There should be a 100% tax break for building wind farms. There also needs to be investment in flow batteries at these schemes so as to iron power shortages.

Also i would suggest more microhydro schemes now that large scale schemes are all in place, combined with other micro schemes so as to allow as much local production as possible.

That combined with a new nuclear power station would go a long way to reducing oil, imports to Sverige and therefore giving more long term stability to the local energy market.

Complete integration with Finland, Norway, Denmark and Germany of the electricity network would also allow more efficient transmission and stability of the entire region in power supply.

Nemesis it's much cheaper to use water pumps in the way I previously mentioned, than to use batteries to store energy.

You just need water pumps which usually work at night when there's excess energy. During the day this water gets released and feeds the hydro power station.

The good part is that any energy source can be used to power the pumps, including wind or whatever. And you don't need any fancy batteries which use up a lot of metal to build.

@ rba

Flow batteries are not used for normal power supply. They are used to iron out spikes in demand over a few mintues and in the case of large flow batteries tens of minutes during a failure of supply, when switching supply, which is lacking in Swedish power generation.

fantastic, another 2000 houses will be powered by wind. Get real. Clean coal and nukes are the only real answer at this time.

@rba: as you say, Swedish dams are already being used as a compensation for Danish wind farms. So the question is how much more unreliable wind can be taken into the system. And one cannot expect that a shortage of wind at one place will be compensated by another in this area.

The price estimates differ a lot, but one fact is generally accepted, with increasing proportion of wind power its profitability goes down. Apparently there is a threshold which can hardly be crossed ith current technology. So I would really like to know if this government statement is backed by some expert study and evaluation of all possibilities or not. The statement or its translation in Local does not seem to be really precise: saying TW.h without mentioning for what time (probably a year) - power units instead of energy units should be used.

@Nemesis: how would a battery handling capacity for a few minutes solve the wind power problem?

@ CarlBlack

The main probem is spikes when switching supplies, which flow batteies are perfect for. that gives enough time for nuclear or hydro to come on stream. Flow bateries are of massive capacity, but are designed for heavy loading at short notice, which we need during switching of power supplies.

That issue needs to be addressed in Sverige, which it is not at present.

Carlblack the Swedish wind farms could be located quite far from the Danish ones, and Sweden has a higher number of mountains, which makes for more variability in supply.

repeat_xpat don't be an idiot, these wind turbines can power much more than one home.

Ugh, horrible things.

Very very noisy.

Cause endless visual (strobe like) disturbances.

If these are to be built, they must be VERY WELL SPREAD OUT.

I know that, in one part of Skåne, they are planning to build 63 around one village.

How mad is that!?

Dreadful idea.

Site them off shore.

@ David Ewing

If you don´t like the Sverige putting up wind turbines, move to a country wihtout them.