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A rumor in my region states that a wind turbine consumes far more energy while being built and setup than it can produce in a lifetime.

The debate is about modern, freshly built turbines in Southern Germany.

Is there evidence that this is true?

Community
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OddDev
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    I'm not sure this is a "notable" claim –  Apr 26 '17 at 13:43
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    Is your region a coal-producing one by any chance? I've heard recent claims that the costs of coal due to environmental damage, health problems, and early deaths is far greater than the value of the energy produced. I'm sure it matters what kind of coal is burned, though. In any event, this could be an attempt to co-opt that argument and turn it around. – JimmyJames Apr 27 '17 at 19:48
  • Maybe if you smelted the steel in some remote region (desert) where heat energy is amply available, transported the windmill to somewhere windy efficiently, you could see it as a wind activated battery... – rackandboneman Apr 27 '17 at 22:06
  • A good answer should take into account how much wind there is in southern Germany. Turbines are far more popular in northern Germany, presumably because southern Germany has much less wind compared to the North. – CodesInChaos Apr 28 '17 at 09:41
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    It's absolutely true, if you forget to build them outdoors. – userLTK Apr 28 '17 at 11:38
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    Rule of thumb: the energy cost to build something, is passed on in the purchase price. Nobody would buy wind turbines if their purchase cost more than they'd ever be able to earn back. – Hobbes Apr 29 '17 at 08:12
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    @Hobbes You forget we live in a world of government subsidies and decisions based on hope and moral ideals instead of math. Never under estimate the raw power of human stupidity. However, nice and objective as the math is, that doesn't mean we are immune to creative accounting shenanigans. Always look into who did the math. – candied_orange Apr 30 '17 at 22:25
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    This fairly broad question actually has an answer of different sources that supports the accepted answer as well. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17775/how-long-does-it-take-for-renewable-technology-to-recoup-its-energy-cost – RomaH May 01 '17 at 13:19
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    @DoritoStyle I am in Utah, USA and have heard this claim as well. Generally from politically conservative, religious persons. – JYelton Apr 20 '18 at 19:53
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    @JYelton generally, hearing a thing from "some people" doesn't make a claim "notable" as required in the site guidelines. –  Apr 21 '18 at 13:10
  • I have yet to see a cost report that takes into account the energy used by the diesel engines necessary for the entire installation -- a necessary calculation if you assume a future where those engines are all electric and run off the grid. I suspect that wind is cost effective provided you use diesel for most of the installation work. – JamieB Oct 21 '22 at 13:44

3 Answers3

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The Guardian cites a 2010 study that found:

the average windfarm [sic] produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. It also found that the average "energy payback" of a turbine was 3-6 months.

Wikipedia has a graphic that is based on another 2010 study showing similar numbers:

enter image description here

The German federal environmental protection agency says that wind turbines produce back the amount of energy that was consumed during production after 3 to 7 months.

Siemens analyzed its wind turbines and found that the energy amortization period is about 5 months for onshore facilities and about 10 months for offshore farms. This considers not only the cost to produce the turbines, but the entire lifetime energy cost, including maintenance, dismantling, etc.

daniel
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tim
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    Have they counted in the additional costs on network due to unforseen changes in energy production? I.e. overproduction when winds come and underproduction when wind calms down? Have they count in the need of backup plan for sudden coverage of power drop (maintaining peak hydro+Coal both ready to switch on)? – Crowley Apr 25 '17 at 16:17
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    @Crowley Probably not. Also probably not the incalculable cost of nuclear waste storage for fusion, or the destroyed landsapes for coal. The question was about **a** wind turbine and the energy being consumed to *build and setup* that specific windmill – Hagen von Eitzen Apr 25 '17 at 17:02
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    What do you mean 'similar numbers'? One chart shows coal at 80x and the other chart shows coal at 11x. Big difference. Why are they so different? If they are wrong for coal, can they be wrong for wind? – Chloe Apr 25 '17 at 17:46
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    @Chloe I meant similar numbers regarding wind energy. This question isn't about comparing energies, so I didn't look further into coal. The report itself only mentions previous studies, but doesn't cite them properly. I'll remove that source because it's not clear where exactly the numbers come from (the peer reviewed studies also seem more trustworthy in general). – tim Apr 25 '17 at 17:55
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    In the interests of properly informing comparisons against conventional energy production, note that this is 2010 data. Photovoltaic has improved quite enormously since then. I'm not sure whether the improvements in wind turbines have been quite so meteoric, but they've also definitely improved (bigger usually equals better better for wind, and they're a lot bigger today! ) I'd also like to know what figures are used for the life expectancy of the various types of generating plant. To a fair approximation, double the life and you double the energy return. – nigel222 Apr 25 '17 at 18:09
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    @nigel222 Yes, I'm sure that wind as well as solar have improved in the last years, but I focused on the question here (which is basically if wind energy makes any sense at all, which it does, and did already years ago). Comparing different sorts of energy is more complex, as energy return isn't the only important measure. Also, doubling the life does not necessarily double the return (because of maintenance costs). – tim Apr 25 '17 at 18:25
  • @tim that's why I said "to a fair approximation". I'm particularly thinking of solar. Very little maintenance is required. The panels last until the environment breaches the panels' seals. There's no fundamental reason why they can't last for centuries. In practice it'll be many decades of incremental improvement before we know the practical limits. Wind turbines are also new and rapidly evolving technology, though they do have moving parts which panels do not. – nigel222 Apr 25 '17 at 18:41
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    @HagenvonEitzen I think you mean fission, not fusion? (I only *wish* we had viable fusion power already!) – Doktor J Apr 25 '17 at 21:08
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    @nigel222 not according to this: https://goo.gl/mtJ8jp ... a photovoltaic cell's output *does* decrease over time, depending on UV exposure and physical stresses. At the 50 year mark, a PV cell may only be outputting ~50-80% of its original output regardless of the "seals". Granted, this is still a pretty great ROI, and as we improve the efficiency of PV cells themselves as well as PV cell recycling it only gets better! – Doktor J Apr 25 '17 at 21:14
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    @nigel222 solar cells are expected to be at 80% capacity after 20 years, high-power inverters and batteries need replacement much more often (5 years). But the replacement costs are much smaller than initial invest. –  Apr 26 '17 at 01:00
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    It'd be nice if that graph had a log scale, rather than a linear one. (Not your fault, someone else's). – Andrew Grimm Apr 26 '17 at 07:20
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    @AndrewGrimm no log scale required here! Hydro is just that much better in terms of an energy ratio, maybe beaten by a sail boat but it gets more hand wavy and less scientific pretty quick. – daniel Apr 26 '17 at 07:39
  • 20-25 times: that's it??? – Kaz Apr 27 '17 at 17:43
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    @HagenvonEitzen My understanding is there are no long-lived nuclear waste products from fusion. Perhaps as Doktor J suggests, you mean fission instead. – JimmyJames Apr 27 '17 at 19:44
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    @Kaz 20-25 times is actually a pretty good EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). It's better than natural gas and imported oil, for example. There are also some newer turbines that can hit EROEI values as high as 50. Nuclear and hydro do better than that, but not much else. Coal does as well, but obviously has plenty of other costs (health and economic, etc) that make EROEI alone a bad measure of its desirability. – Toast Apr 27 '17 at 20:06
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    @TaylorOstberg Suppose a carpenter buys a hammer for $10, and it's toast by the time he earns the first $250 with it. Know what I mean? The numbers just feel shitty somehow, ha. – Kaz Apr 28 '17 at 01:38
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    @Kaz if i had some hammer eating carpentry job where my only expenses were $10 hammers, and my net profit was $240 an hour I would happily buy 40 hammers every week at the hardware store. Anyway this is energy returned on energy invested, you can bet an energy company will have a substantial markup on their sales price. – daniel Apr 28 '17 at 13:26
  • I should point out that the study cited in _The Guardian_ has as one of its authors an employee of what appears to be a wind power generation firm. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the results, but as a comment to the question notes, we should pay attention to who is doing the math(s). – David May 02 '17 at 16:02
  • Why nuclear ROI is so low on this graph ? I have seen nuclear ROI up to 90. This is the densest energy actually in use, and most nuclear plants built are still operationnal. – xrorox Feb 19 '18 at 14:53
  • TIL - we're never going to stop using coal. Ever. – Mazura Feb 02 '19 at 01:46
  • It does seem hard to believe their claim. Consider the amount of energy expended in the concrete alone. How much energy was used by the mixers? By trucks that hauled it in and poured it? I assume they are simply pricing "the turbine" itself and not all the heavy and costly infrastructure which made it possible to install and utilize. – JamieB Oct 20 '22 at 14:28
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Given there's much talk about the 2010 study, here's a 2013 one. It mainly expand the other one, by:

  • "Tweaking the lifetime": very low ones were assumed for conventional plants (also including deprecated centrifugal enrichment tech for nuclear)

  • "Counting all output", even if not needed: i.e. including the need for buffering (aka "backup" in case of variable energy sources)

Energy Return On Investment

With respect to just wind power, we can see they offer a similar mean figure of around 16~19 (which as Weißbach notes is massively dependent on the place turbines are built). If you consider the aforementioned later caveat, this gets double halved, but still we are quite above "energy sink" levels.

Further anyway (depending on whether your actual point is about wind energy in general, or "to be built new turbines") EROI further scales up, given most common newer installations average size is almost two times an E-66.

mirh
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    What do the blue and yellow columns mean exactly? – Tomáš Zato Apr 28 '17 at 08:59
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    The yellow columns include backup power. – Cees Timmerman Apr 28 '17 at 09:03
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    Your source notes that these are energy costs and outputs, not monetary costs, which can be entirely different. So instead of computing the raw EROI, as in the graph above, it can be more useful to consider the exergy equivalent, by weighting both the energy inputs and energy output by a factor of 3 when the energy type is electrical. – Cees Timmerman Apr 28 '17 at 09:12
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    Also, using GDP for economical viability is [flawed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product#Further_criticisms) as it ignores environmental damage (and resulting loss of health and tourism). – Cees Timmerman Apr 28 '17 at 09:43
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    @Cees Timmerman if you open it that was done (called EMROI). It doesn't include externalities, but if any those would just lower fossils I guess. We were talking about raw energy i/o on the other hand so that's why I didn't mentioned it. – mirh Apr 28 '17 at 12:34
  • You did not link to a study. You linked to a thorium-advocate's blog post referencing a study. The study in question is allegedly quite flawed, there have been [rebuttals published](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214014327). They find reasons to question numerical results, physically impossible claims (i.e. basic concepts gotten wrong) and strawman arguments in the 2013 study. – otus May 07 '17 at 09:13
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    1) I linked the blog because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to credit the nice graph they made. 2) In the end there was a study beneath, so I dunno why the first 2 sentences. 3) I had read [them](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214014327) [too](http://energyskeptic.com/2017/tilting-at-windmills-spains-disastrous-attempt-to-replace-fossil-fuels-with-solar-pv-part-2/). May I point the finger towards Mr. Raugei and his PV interests so? 4) Now, put aside childish namecalling the question is: why assuming a fantastic world where all energy will only come from X source? – mirh May 07 '17 at 17:00
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The roi depends on the windmill, and it could be bigger than 3-6 months. For example, if the windmill operates in colder regions, "the additional cost of such a system [de-icing] can be compensated by additional production within 2-3 years of operation." Source http://www.elforsk.se/Global/Vindforsk/Survey%20reports/12_13_report_icing.pdf

Of course, a wind turbine could be deiced by different means, like for example using hot water sprayed from a helicopter, but the savings on the initial building costs are translated to higher operational costs. For a one time de-icing "costs will be recovered within 48 hours compared to a reduced or no production."

https://energiforskmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/21261/airborne-de-icing-solutions-for-wind-turbines-energiforskrapport-2016-300.pdf

ctapus
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    [Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) I understand that some wind turbines are going to be slower to pay back than others, but you haven't covered the general case here. From your answer, it isn't clear that any will ever pay themselves back. – Oddthinking Apr 26 '17 at 13:38
  • Interesting article but I wish they sourced the 2-3 years. By waiting for a warm day they could de-ice it for free. Also I thought you were joking about the helicopter hot water spraying Until I saw the pictures in the second document. – daniel Apr 27 '17 at 09:34
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    This answer is pretty cold area centric, one of the links says in the coldest parts of the USA turbines are only effected by icing ~5% of the time. I'm sure if you asked about de icing in Australia they would ask you what ice was. Building in extreme cold or low wind areas could return less energy than invested, but it would not make any money so no one wants to do it. – daniel Apr 27 '17 at 13:03
  • @Oddthinking You are right, my intention was just to present a different estimate from the 2010 studies. Unfortunately, I don't have enough reputation to comment on other people's answer. – ctapus Apr 27 '17 at 13:10
  • @user568458 My choice of words was rather poor, thank you for spotting this. – ctapus Apr 27 '17 at 13:13
  • @daniel Indeed it's an extreme example, especially for the Southern-Germany. – ctapus Apr 27 '17 at 13:34
  • *any example of any windmill in use anywhere in the world that returns less energy than it requires to build and maintain* - Why would such a windmill exist? I have faith that folks planning, designing, and installing power systems like this have at least a small amount of intelligence to not keep power generation strategies that cost more than they earn around for very long. Maybe some bad techs pop up for a while before people realize it, sure, but the systems evolve and the net negative ones would never be used long term in practice. They'd just be non-notable stories to tell later. – Jason C Apr 27 '17 at 14:24
  • (It's sort of like how the claim the OP asked about is rather absurd [the claim itself, not the OP's question about it]: In 2017 we would not just now be discovering that wind power does not work, given how long it's been around, otherwise it would not have been around as long as it has. Obviously that's not an answer or a proof, but you get the idea.) – Jason C Apr 27 '17 at 14:26
  • Subsidies could be an incentive to have inefficient wind mills. Unfortunately, I don't have figures for Germany, but for US "between 2009 and 2014 the federal government will spend $150 billion on clean energy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies – ctapus Apr 27 '17 at 16:43
  • @ctapus even with subsidies a company would want to make profits. Also on the page you linked $369 billion is spent on gas oil and coal, compared to the $150 billion on clean energy. Nations pay for this infrastructure so citizens can pay back more in taxes. – daniel Apr 28 '17 at 10:48
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    @daniel Not necessarily. Consider the agriculture subsidies [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act): "The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land and to kill off excess livestock." In essence, a noncompetitive farm would still make a profit. Note that I'm not saying that this is the case here, I am just speculating on both OP's and Jason's questions on why an unprofitable wind turbine would exist. – ctapus May 02 '17 at 12:45
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    @ctapus I'm talking about a power generation company maximizing their profit by choosing to put a windfarm in a viable area so they can sell power. That said there are cases where the decision makers goof up, or choose feelings over logic: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-24844182 – daniel May 02 '17 at 14:06
  • I hadn't actually considered that wind turbines might need de-icing, but again, it all depends on the environment they're in. Off-shore turbines? Yeah, I could see that. The non-coastal regions of Canada? Almost certainly not. The air tends to be so dry in winter that it wouldn't even be needed. Alternatively, the cost of de-icing might be more than the cost of operating at the reduced efficiency, unless the ice build-up is enough to damage the turbine blades. – Ernie May 17 '17 at 16:07