Putting these numbers together indicates that only 10-15% of the electricity consumed annually by NSs electric trains will come from wind, with the rest a mixture that includes mostly Dutch gas and coal plus a small amount of Belgian and German coal, nuclear and lignite and maybe even a little German solar. In 2016, Dutch wind hit the headlines again, when a 700 MW offshore windfarm near the town of Borssele became the most cost-effective in the world. The T1 standard relates to telecommunications. There are ~40 utilities with sharp price competition in NL. Knew this was BS from the headline. Were these conditions to repeat themselves now, and if NSs trains were powered exclusively by wind, they would almost certainly come to a halt. As well as the technological problems discussed in this blog can we afford this destruction of our landscapes pursuing this RE dream. These. The ns also solved the issue of delayed trains by changing the defenition of delay from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. The Dutch government is looking to ramp up the nations share of renewable energy from 4 percent in 2014 to 16 percent in 2023. Illustration . Updated [5 February 2019]: Original version of this article attributed this quote to Thomas Homer-Dixon. So even if this claim were true, it would require exponentially more windmills and/or solar panels to cover any significant portion of the continental United States. So technically, the government is not paying for the FITs.. Started operation in 2001 and is developing a 6,000kW two blade downwind turbine. An earlier version said all Dutch trains were now 100% powered by wind-generated electricity, according to the national railway company NS. [17] Where the parks will come and how they will be built is still being discussed. It is 100% powered by electric. Where I post my arguments on various things climate-related, belief that a 100% renewable-powered train can and does exist is ubiquitous. On insulated wires, the speed, on average, is about 2/3 the speed of light. I have no wind records for the Netherlands but P.F. Built 1992 this nearshore wind farm had just 4 Nedwind 500 KW turbines based 1km to shore. Even the two Dutch wind farms with which NS contracts directly for wind power, Noordoostpolder and Luchterduinen, are tied generally to the Dutch grid and not tied directly into the NS rail system. Wheres the renewable engy only socket? French people are bricoleurs they like to build their own house, thanks to the fact that if it has a surface below 175 m2 you dont need to go through an architect, you can do your own building plan. Grid connections for the Luchterduinen and Nordpoostpolder wind farms (locations approximate) are shown in black. Yeap. Good for saving valuable hydrocarbons for something more useful than burning them, and they really can supply all my electricity 24/7 that way. OK, these days its less than the bandwidth to your mobile, but mumble years ago it was the real deal. And of course no such connections exist. As shown in the table below installed capacity is dominantly fossil fuel, with natural gas making up 61% of total installed capacity and coal 15%. This passage was written by David Hughes. Under this system the government chooses locations and organizes tenders for projects of 350 MW, and project developers can offer bids for each farm. This record was immediately beaten the following year with another 766 MW being added. It`s a scam. And only half of the wind power NS has contracted for comes from the Netherlands. Gimme a break. Up until the Westereems Wind Park was commissioned the largest onshore wind farm was the Princess Alexia Windpark in Zeewolde (122MW),[36] consisting of 36 REpower turbines and a 3.2MW/33MWh battery storage power station of BMW i3 batteries. There is a way of saying this, which characterises this behaviour, but I cant write it here because it is not politically correct too bad. Only a small fraction of the power delivered to its trains actually comes from wind.. And half of Japan, poor devils. All day so far. (Figure 2: Note the dotted lines showing non-electrified track. Eneco has made a point . According to Thomas Homer-Dixon, wind turbines never recoup the energy it takes to build them. Produced at least 19 models at 250, 750, 1500, 2000, 2300, 2500, 2600, 3000, 3600, 3800, 4000 and 4500kW. [1] In 2019, the wind turbines provided the country with 12% of its electricity demand during the year, a figure that is growing but somewhat below the average of 15% that wind power provides across the whole of the EU's electricity consumption. Everyone drawing energy from the grid is equal, on a physical basis. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it. Especially since there are no green electrons. RE fans should understand that present mainstream RE technologies ( mostly PV and wind) require considerable real estate and in our small island one cannot travel very far without having a wind farm in view. wind power in the Netherlands generates 7.4 billion kWh (7.4TWh) of electricity annually, and according to BP the Netherlands total electricity generation in 2015 was 109.6TWh. A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of. The truth is that its impossible to determine the source of electrons actually moving NS trains down the track. The farm was dismantled after 22 years service in 2016. The headline: Netherlands Trains Now Running on 100% Wind Power. How much of the Netherlands electricity is supplied by wind? More than 12% of the Netherland's electricity is generated from renewable sources, mainly biomass and waste (5% of the total) and wind (7% of the total). The two Dutch wind farms that have contracted to sell power to NS (Noordoostpolder and Luchterduinen) are both connected directly to the Dutch grid, along with all the other power plants in the country, and NS draws its power from the grid: Figure 3: The Netherlands' electricity grid. In total, NS consumes around 1.2 TWh of electricity to power its trains. What is clear is that most of those electrons didnt originate from wind turbines. The Dutch railway folks have PPAs to buy energy only from renewable energy producers, and thus claim, our passenger trains run on renewable energy, but fail to add on a contract basis. Snopes did not find evidence that Germany was experiencing a "total collapse" in wind and solar energy. One wind turbine running for an hour can power a train for 120 miles, the companies said. And no facts will ever get in the way of a true believer . Every electric train on the Dutch railways NS network now gets 100 per cent of its energy from wind energy. Belgium and Finland. Web. Three strikes. NS claims 100% wind power because it has a contract with various wind farms to produce enough energy to power its rail system, but this is just an accounting transaction. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. That means electrons traveling across international borders to help power the NS railway system come in some amount from wind power, but in much larger amounts from non-wind sources. Wind power from Finland can be discounted. The turbines supply enough energy to power 2.4 million households. I have caught people several times in their lectures saying they are burning biogas on a campus, and they always are sheepish when I call them out on it, because they know they are fibbing. Many of the numerous smaller and older wind farms in the Netherlands consist of much smaller turbines compared to those typically deployed today. HomerDixon.com. But none of this wind power is directly connected to the NS rail system. However, wind power consumption in the Netherlands in 2015 was 12.5TWh, indicating that about 5TWh of wind power was imported during the year. I struggled to find reliable figures to back that up, so I didnt want to repeat the claim here. The comment about T1s was meant to be a wry tomayto vs tomarto thing which probably didnt work as an explanation of why I get pedantic. It goes back to the start of 2016, and includes the Netherlands as well as Belgium and the Nordic countries (and Germany) that NS claim to be supplied by. simply use the smart technology to cut them off until their consumption matches the wind farms output. For example, in 2015, Burlington, Vermont, became the first city to announce it was running totally on renewable power. power for over 400,000 households every day, a figure roughly equivalent to the number of households in the Northern Netherlands.[13]. So I know that its true, just as if I had read it in the Guardian. That would power a large proportion of all of the households in Amsterdam**. Physically it makes no difference as you say, but as HeavyWeather pointed out above my money is now going to fund reactors not Energiewende, so Im happy. This article was amended on 11 January 2017. In 2020 wind power provided 11.54% of the Dutch electricity generation (see table above) while solar power provided an additional 7.25% for a combined 18.79% - easily meeting the target without taking other renewable sources into account, even though the target for onshore wind capacity was not met. So, 1) I didnt write the text, 2) the text itself is selectively quoted, and 3) the argument it makes, taken in isolation, is meaningless. Earlier this week, one of their national railway companies, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), announced that, since 1 st January, every single one of its electric trains have been running on energy. But none of this wind power is directly connected to the NS rail system. Since Lithuania has a chronic power shortage the flow normally goes North-South. A book co-edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon contained a passage stating that windmills "might never generate as much energy as was invested in building [them]." Produced at least 14 models of 100. NS is the main public train in the Netherlands. I guess I could have found something cheaper still if Id looked hard enough. Consumer unions help by auctioning for grouped members. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? As of the first of January this year, all public transport trains are being powered by renewable energy, namely from wind power. You may have a battery bank to store some of it in case of an outage, but mostly it will go to the electric company and they credit you. The construction of these wind farms along with others in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland helped NS and Eneco to hit their target so far ahead of schedule. NS and Eneco first announced their plan of a wind-powered railway in 2015 in order to drastically slash train ride emissions. The wholesale price of GOs seems to be a mere 0.36/MWh or so. Furthermore, both solar panels and wind turbines are capable of functioning under cold . Its of course a waste to install a separate grid with only 100% renewable electricity. That would meet approximately 75% of the countries electricity needs. The claim by the Dutch railway network, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), is almost entirely a sleight of hand. As of Jan. 1, 600,000 daily train passengers have been traveling completely carbon neutral, according to an announcement from the Netherlands principal passenger railway operator, NS. In contrast to onshore wind farms, almost all turbines by January 2017 were situated in just a few large wind farms. But it really doesnt matter which countries the Finnish wind power passes through on its way to the Netherlands. And enjoy 30c/kWh household electric rates, as in Denmark and Germany, without there being one iota of measurable benefit to the planet? . [20] An additional 228 MW of capacity was installed at sea. That is why half of the demand will be sourced from a number of new wind farms in Belgium and Scandinavia, which have been specifically assigned for this contract., http://www.railway-technology.com/features/featuremichel-kerkhof-of-eneco-discusses-the-dutch-rail-networks-renewable-revolution-4647194/. If its a less busy line, some of the electricity is stored in batteries on the train. There is, however, a problem. Only a small fraction of the power delivered to its trains actually comes from wind. I dont mind buying 100% renewable energy for my house ( I have got a small 6kw wind turbine which has supplied me for over 10 years) if it is the same price as normal electricity but I would not pay a premium for it as some suppliers charge. Such as happened earlier this year in the UK when we had several days of around only 300MW of total metered wind power. During these periods wind generation in the neighboring Netherlands would also have fallen to low levels. quite an amount of work youve done there, It doesnt add up ! In other words, the two oldest sources of renewable power, water and wood, are carrying most of the burden for Burlingtons renewable achievement, not the sources that might come to mind when people read the headline. The other thing most people (at least in the US) dont consider when they see stories like this: A country like the Netherlands is literally 1/3 the size of the state of Ohio. The energy comes from new wind farms in the Netherlands and surrounding countries - and it's a lot. This year, Dutch commuters ditched fossil fuels to power their country's trains on 100% wind energy - and it's a grand idea that's catching on the world over. The Nuclear Humanist 1.75K subscribers 40 Dislike Share 814 views Jul 23, 2017 The Dutch Railway Corporation. The fund is paid for by adding a surcharge to household electricity bills. 2015 was a record year for new installations in the Netherlands with 586 MW added of which 180 MW were offshore. Active 2020. (CONTINUED), London Underground trains use two conductor rails to manage their electricity needs (Image courtesy [+] of BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images), In all cases, this regenerated electricity can be returned to the power line via the conductor rail. I am laughing. Indirect Contributions Are Essential To Physics, The Crisis In Theoretical Particle Physics Is Not A Moral Imperative, Why Study Science? Bach supplies data for Belgium, which should be a close analogy, and Figure 4 shows Belgian wind generation for September 2014: Figure 4: Belgian wind generation, September 2014, With an installed capacity of around 1850MW in this month the overall wind capacity factor was 11% and there were a number of occasions on which wind generation fell effectively to zero for hours on end. The Dutch government is looking to ramp up the nation's share of renewable energy from 4 percent in 2014 to 16 percent in 2023. According to a government web page ( now removed!) Overhead wires are best suited to tram and intercity services, whereas the more compact third rail option is preferred for underground trains. These include the 580km NorNed submarine cable (700 MW) link to Norway, the 1,000 MW BritNed cable link to the United Kingdom and the COBRA cable link to Denmark (700 MW). 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