How well did the Japanese wind farms really do?

Another topic about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami is being passed around like crazy right now.  It's supposed to be a "good news" story.  The one I'm seeing the most at the moment is another HuffPo piece, Battle-proof Wind Farms Survive Japan's Trial by Fire.

Did they really?

The story doesn't actually give a lot of information - but it does seem to imply a lot.

The facts, according to this story:

• the wind industry is "still functioning and helping to keep the lights on."
• there has been no wind facility damage reported by wind association members
• this includes the "semi-offshore" Kamisu wind farm, which is located "about 300 km from the epicentre of the quake."
• most wind turbines are fully operational, though 3 are off line due to grid damage, and that one particular wind farm (Kamaishi) was unaffected by the tsunami due to being 900m above sea level.
• wind farm owners have been asked to "step up operations as much as possible"
• stocks for wind farms have gone up

Oh, and the Tokyo Electric Company, which also owns the damaged nuclear facilities is probably very happy that they have a diverse portfolio that includes wind farms.

Somehow, that last bits sounds really... wrong to me.

What is implied is that, right now, the Japanese wind farms are currently the only reliable source of electricity for Japan - or at least in the affected area - and that they're more earthquake proof than nuclear power plants.  At least that's how it seems to me.

What we don't know:

• were these wind farms affected by both the earthquake and the tsunami (though we do know that one specific wind farm was not affected by the tsunami)
• how many wind farms Japan has
• where these wind farms are located, particularly the Kamisu wind farm
• how much of Japan's energy needs are met by wind farms, and are these wind farms truly meeting these needs.

We're also not being told how close the affected nuclear plants are to the epicentre of the quake, nor how many nuclear plants, or any other electricity generating plants, Japan has.

The article neglects to mention another important point.  While the Fukushima plants were damaged by the earthquake, they were not endangered by it.  Had they been affected by only the earthquake, there would have been no danger of a meltdown.  What the plants couldn't withstand was the tsunami on top of the earthquake.  Age of the plants was another factor; they were not built to the same standards as newer facilities.  There is also apparently a human element involved that potentially goes back years, but I'm not going to touch that area at all.

Well, let's see if we can find out some of this information.  First off, where is the Kamisu wind farm, with its "semi-offshore" turbines.  The article makes no mention, though there is one photo of the Kamisu wind farm showing what looks like 6 turbines.  After a bit of digging, I found this map.  Select a country from the drop down menu on the right hand side, and it will show the Japanese wind farms.  You can then select Kamisu.  The Kamisu wind farm is in the Kanto region.  If you zoom in, you can see that the wind farm is located at a small spit of land sticking out into the ocean.  To see where that is in relation to the epicentre of the quake and the affected nuclear power plants, I found a clearer map.  I've taken a screen capture and added an arrow to show approximately where the Kamisu wind farm is.

You'll note that 300 km is quite a bit farther away from the epicentre of the quake itself than the Fukushima nuclear facilities.  It is not one of the areas hit the hardest by the earthquake, though at 8.9 magnitude, it certainly would have been affected strongly.  Also, noting the bulge of land where the nuclear reactors are located, it's clear why that area was hit so hard by the tsunami.  I notice another nuclear symbol much closer to the epicentre, but there doesn't seem to be any concern about it.

How did the tsunami affect the area the Kamisu wind farm is located?  Though I'm finding some references to the area, and it does seem to have been hit hard, there's nothing about how badly the wind farm itself had been hit by the tsunami.  If someone else can find that information, please pass it on to me.

Next questions; how many wind farms does Japan have, how many wind turbines are at the Kamisu wind farm, and how much energy do these wind farms provide for Japan?

For the first part, I found this image.

The Kanto region has only 13 turbines.  The Tohoki region is closer to the epicentre and has 54 turbines, but there's no mention of how they've been affected by the earthquake, nor do we know if they're close enough to the coast, or low enough, to have been affected by the tsunami.

As for the Kamisu wind farm itself?

It has only 7 turbines.

This is barely even significant.  Why is this wind farm in particular noted in the article?  Is it because it's turbines are semi-offshore? 

Okay, so now we know how many wind farms there are and where the Kamisu wind farm specifically is located.  We still don't know how many turbines were actually affected by the tsunami, though we do know that some are inoperational due to grid damage.

Before I go into how much of Japan's energy is sourced from wind power, let's see if another article being passed around helps any.

Japan's wind industry hails earthquake-resilient wind farms.

Oh, dear.

Let's see what potential problems we see here.

To start with, right near the beginning, it references the HuffPo piece I've already linked to. 

Kelly Rigg, writer of the HuffPo piece, is the chief executive of the Global Campaign for Climate Action

Rigg spoke to Yoshinori Ueda, who is the leader of the International Committee of the Japan Wind Power Association and Japan Wind Energy Association, and is the source for some of the information in the HuffPo piece.


Eurus Energy Holdings, owner of 22% of Japan's wind farms and a subsidiary of the Tokyo Electric Company, is another source.

EU climate change commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, is another source.

And finally, while the bi line states the story was written by "BusinessGreen Staff," a note on the bottom states that it was written by the Executive Director of TckTckTck, also of the Global Campaign for Climate Action. though I suppose that might actually be in reference to Rigg, of the HuffPo piece.

So the sources are not only severely biased towards the anthropogenic climate change agenda, with its attendant anti-nuclear stance, but there's also massive corporate bias from wind energy companies.

In other words, those involved in the "green" business are busily using the disaster in Japan to push their agendas.

Lovely.

Does this piece give us more information?  A bit.  It mentions that 6 wind farms had been offline due to grid failure, but are back up and running again, and that "The resumption of power output came in response to a request from Tohoku Electric Power."  I'm not entirely sure what that means.  Are they saying that, if the TEP didn't send a request, they would have stayed offline?  It also mentions that "most" turbines were working, once again mentioning Kamisu (again, perhaps because it's semi-offshore).  Meanwhile, we still have no real information about how the turbines were affected by both the earthquake and the tsunami.

Okay, back to our final question.  How much are Japan's energy needs met by wind farms.  A related question would be, what are all the sources of Japan's electricity?

For that, I found this graphic.

Japan, it turns out, had a total of 54 nuclear reactors in operation at the time of the earthquake.  There are 4 reactors in the Fukushima plant, and it looks like all four of them are in danger right now. Which means there are still 50 operational nuclear reactors in Japan, including one that was much closer to the epicentre of the earthquake, according to the first graphic I included at the top.  That's about 92% of Japan's nuclear reactors that are still providing power for Japan (or at least to those places that are able to receive power).

You'll note that there is no percentage for wind farms on the pie chart above.  They fall into the "other renewables" cagetory, which also includes geothermal and solar.  How much of that 2% is made up of wind farms, we're not told.

So what can we say about the wind farms in Japan?  Apparently, they all survived the earthquake quite handily - but that's also true of all the other power sources, except the Fukushima plant.  We don't know how they were affected by the tsunami, despite references to the semi-offshore Kamisu wind farm. 

Based on this, were the wind farms truly "battle-proof?"  In truth, we don't even know how severely they were tested.

While I'm glad to hear that the wind farms are able to help provide power to stricken regions, the notion that wind farms are any better than any of the other sources of power in Japan has not, as far as I can tell, truly been proven.  There's a severe lack of data being given.  As for these articles, I find them to be quite misleading, in that they seem to be implying that wind farms are doing better than everything else, when they're only being compared to the Fukushima reactors.  Hardly a reasonable comparison.

On top of that, I find it rather disgusting that they're gloating about how much their shares have improved at a time like this.

update:  Apparently, there are 6 reactors at the Fukushima plant that are off line.  I haven't been online much lately, but this is the first time I've heard talk of more than 4.  

The workers at Fukushima are incredible.

A tragedy made worse

I haven't had much chance to post here lately (if you visit my home school blog, you'll read why, though I do warn it might fall into the category of TMI!).  On top of that, it was just really hard to make any of my usual posts in light of what's been going on in Japan in the last while.  First the shock of an earthquake large enough to affect the earth's axis.  Then the horror of the tsunami.  Finally, Japan continues to struggle with containing their damaged nuclear reactors.

What has made this event unique is the prevalence of cameras and videos in Japan.  We've been inundated with images that have made us all eyewitnesses.  They are astonishing beyond belief.



Ten's of thousands of people are dead or missing.






Countries from around the world have offered aid.  Some offers have been accepted, while others are on standby, ready to move should they be asked.

Meanwhile, around the world, people are offering their thoughts and prayers - as well as making donations and finding other ways they can help.

Yet no tragedy seems to go to waste without someone trying to use it to spout their own agenda or spread their own hate.

The first I saw was on someone's facebook status. This was a "gamer friend" - someone I know only as a "neighbour" in a game I play.  The first was a status update that started off sending sympathies to Japan, then quickly devolved to a rant about how they were the richest country in the world and would be able to rebuild in months, because they'd taken so many US jobs.  I challenged her on her claims, but she never responded.  Instead, I saw a new update.  Here, it started as a warning against scams claiming to raise donations for Japan - followed up by another rant on how no one should be sending donations, because they were so rich from all the jobs stolen from the US.

She is no longer on my friends list.

Then you had the people trying to tie the earthquake to climate change.  No surprise there.  After Katrina, Indonesia and Haiti, they're no strangers to dancing on the bodies of the dead to push their AGW crusades.

Next on the list were the anti-nuclear crowd.  They, of course, are expecting the worst - are almost eager for it, for all their claims to the contrary - and don't believe any of the official reports.  Of course, those reports are changing so fast, there's no way to know anything right now.  We shall see how that evolved.  I find it quite disturbing, however, that they are so quick to ignore the thousands of dead while fretting over the nuclear plants and preaching their anti-nuclear message.  Some, if you can believe it, are even planning to stockpile iodine.  Which would make more sense if they were actually in any danger, but we're talking people who live in central North America. 

Just now, however, was the worst of the worst.

A certain group of people I know have started sharing a YouTube video.  I'm not going to link to this pathetic piece of garbage here, and hopefully enough complaints will have been made against it to have it removed completely.

The video is of a young woman who's going on about how "God is so good" for answering prayers.  The prayer in question was to "open atheists eyes."  The prayer was answered, according to her, through the earthquake in Japan.

Now, within the first minute of this video, it was obvious to me that this was a troll.  For someone who claimed to be a Christian, she didn't talk or act like one.  I've encountered a few whacked out extreme Christians in my time, and they don't act or talk like her, either.  A quick search revealed that this person is a member of a satirical, spoof "Christian" forum, where she's known to post under another alias as well.

For a troll, this one is particularly dedicated.  There's a year's worth of videos on her YouTube channel.  All stupid and obnoxious.  She was obviously an anti-Christian playing herself as a Christian extremist.  It didn't help that she did things like call Lent, lentil.

This particular video, however, was disgusting beyond belief.  If she had been a real Christian spouting this, it would be disgusting beyond belief.  What makes it worse is that we've got an anti-Christian troll using the horror and tragedy of Japan to troll against Christians by posing as one and spewing her garbage.

It only took a few minutes of searching to find out her double identity, and that she was a fake.  The people sharing her video (and giving her channel hits in the process) fell for it.  They're the usual bunch of anti-Christians, and they shared it with comments such as this.

PLEASE GOD, Save us from the Christian Right!!!

I don't recall this woman's political views being mentioned, but then I didn't waste time watching the whole thing.  This crowd always assume Christian = political right, and it's a common phrase.

This is why I hate organized religions.

Because apparently, this video is what they think organized religion is like.  Nothing like painting millions of people worldwide with the same brush!

This will make your hair stand on end.  To quote my source for this: "... and people are afraid of Muslims?"

Okay, aside from the hyperbole in the first sentence, the second one is just plain ignorance.  People are afraid of Muslims because they see all those videos and read news about radical Muslims teaching their kids that Jews are dogs and pigs that need to be wiped off the face of the earth, and that the greatest thing they can do is blow themselves up while killing as many infidels as possible, or go around shooting US soldiers after watching a fake video supposedly showing atrocities by US soldiers but were actually taken from a movie, or murder families in their sleep.  People can't tell one type of Muslim from another.  It's not like the extremists walk around with signs taped to their foreheads reading "I am a radical Muslim!"  Comparing this woman's ignorant blathering doesn't exactly fall into the same category.

Here's the thing.  Of the many thousands of Christians around the world posting, sharing and otherwise articulating their caring for the victims of Japan's triple tragedy, sending their heartfelt prayers and organizing ways to send help, this group of Christophobes (and it's a very specific group only) is busily sharing this disgusting video, giving the troll who made it more traffic on her YouTube channel in the process, and using it to spew their own anti-Christian bigotry.

I wonder how many of them bothered to go to the YouTube page and flag the video as offensive?  Somehow, I don't think a single one did - just as not a single one bothered to do a simple google search to find out if this sicko was for real, or the troll that she turned out to be.

Which, as far as I'm concerned, makes them every bit as disgusting as the troll who made the video.

update:  Well, that was fast!  The woman who made the video I've been talking about has admitted her videos were all fake, and her YouTube account is now closed.


Let's see how many of the people who shared this will apologize for spreading their hate.