scholarly journals Contesting energy transitions: wind power and conflicts in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Avila-Calero

Abstract This article studies the expansion of large-scale wind energy projects on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Mexico) and local socio-environmental conflicts that have emerged in response. It explores how the neoliberal agenda in Mexico is shaping a specific way of implementing wind energy projects, and how this is leading to local resistance and the production of alternatives. The article is based on a historical analysis reconstructing the main features of wind power development, and pathways of struggle. By following a political ecology perspective, wind energy is seen as embedded in a wider frame of power relations and the uneven patterns of the Mexican economy. The struggles of indigenous groups are thus analyzed as the expression of peripheral communities against the enclosure of communal lands, the private appropriation of benefits, and the lack of democratic procedures involved in these projects. The discussion emphasizes the role of communal identities and institutions in building successful networks, while introducing new concepts (energy sovereignty) and alternative schemes in wind power production (cooperatives). The overall approach of the article is that any move towards a different energy system should be politically encouraged by social and cultural means, rather than be largely economically motivated. Keywords: wind energy, neoliberalism, socio-environmental conflicts, energy sovereignty, cooperatives, Tehuantepec

2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110189
Author(s):  
Lourdes Alonso Serna

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca is the first region in Mexico with a large-scale wind energy development. The region holds 60% of the country’s installed capacity, but the new infrastructure has faced opposition from sectors of the local population concerned about wind farms’ social and environmental impacts. The opposition and ensuing conflicts have been widely studied; some of these studies have framed wind energy as part of the recent cycle of land grabbing. Nevertheless, this literature has overlooked landholders’ acceptance of wind energy. This paper aims to address this gap and argues that the main driver of the land grabbing process is land rent. The paper draws on recent insights from political ecology that highlight that the commodification of nature is predicated on rent. The paper uses the notion of value grabbing to look at the social struggles over property rights in the Isthmus and the conflicts for the increase and distribution of rents from wind energy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 526 ◽  
pp. 211-216
Author(s):  
Qiong Ying Lv ◽  
Yu Shi Mei ◽  
Xi Jia Tao

As the trend of large-scale wind Power, People pay more attention to wind energy, which as a clean, renewable energy. Traditional unarmed climbing and crane lifting has been unable to meet the requirements of the equipment maintenance. Magnetic climb car can automatically crawl along the wall of the steel tower, the maintenance equipment and personnel can be sent to any height of the tower. The quality of the magnetic wall-climbing car is 550kg, which can carry 1.3 tons load. In this paper completed the magnetic wall-climbing car design and modeling, mechanical analysis in static and dynamic, obtained with the air gap and Magnetic Force curves. The application shows that the magnetic wall-climbing car meets the reliable adsorption, heavy-duty operation, simple operation etc..


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Olovsson ◽  
Maria Taljegard ◽  
Michael Von Bonin ◽  
Norman Gerhardt ◽  
Filip Johnsson

This study analyses the impacts of electrification of the transport sector, involving both static charging and electric road systems (ERS), on the Swedish and German electricity systems. The impact on the electricity system of large-scale ERS is investigated by comparing the results from two model packages: 1) a modeling package that consists of an electricity system investment model (ELIN) and electricity system dispatch model (EPOD); and 2) an energy system investment and dispatch model (SCOPE). The same set of scenarios are run for both model packages and the results for ERS are compared. The modeling results show that the additional electricity load arising from large-scale implementation of ERS is mainly, depending on model and scenario, met by investments in wind power in Sweden (40–100%) and in both wind (20–75%) and solar power (40–100%) in Germany. This study also concludes that ERS increase the peak power demand (i.e., the net load) in the electricity system. Therefore, when using ERS, there is a need for additional investments in peak power units and storage technologies to meet this new load. A smart integration of other electricity loads than ERS, such as optimization of static charging at the home location of passenger cars, can facilitate efficient use of renewable electricity also with an electricity system including ERS. A comparison between the results from the different models shows that assumptions and methodological choices dictate which types of investments are made (e.g., wind, solar and thermal power plants) to cover the additional demand for electricity arising from the use of ERS. Nonetheless, both modeling packages yield increases in investments in solar power (Germany) and in wind power (Sweden) in all the scenarios, to cover the new electricity demand for ERS.


Author(s):  
Yasmina Bouzarour-Amokrane ◽  
Ayeley P. Tchangani ◽  
François Pérès

The necessity to control and reduce the negative impact of human activities on environment and life quality along with technology progress in renewable energy in general and wind energy in particular render it possible today to consider wind energy projects on a large scale. Developing wind energy on a large scale however raises other problems such as choosing an adequate site to settle a wind farm where many other issues such technical feasibility and performance levels, visual pollution, economic and social concerns, etc. must be addressed. Such decisions usually involve many parameters and necessitate the collaboration of many stakeholders. In this context, this chapter proposes an approach based on the concept of bipolar analysis through Benefit Opportunity Cost and Risk (BOCR) analysis, which permits one to address correctly a Group Decision-Making Problem (GDMP) to build a decision support system in order to assist the wind farm installation process.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 2164
Author(s):  
Vahid Arabzadeh ◽  
Peter D. Lund

Heat demand dominates the final energy use in northern cities. This study examines how changes in heat demand may affect solutions for zero-emission energy systems, energy system flexibility with variable renewable electricity production, and the use of existing energy systems for deep decarbonization. Helsinki city (60 °N) in the year 2050 is used as a case for the analysis. The future district heating demand is estimated considering activity-driven factors such as population increase, raising the ambient temperature, and building energy efficiency improvements. The effect of the heat demand on energy system transition is investigated through two scenarios. The BIO-GAS scenario employs emission-free gas technologies, bio-boilers and heat pumps. The WIND scenario is based on large-scale wind power with power-to-heat conversion, heat pumps, and bio-boilers. The BIO-GAS scenario combined with a low heat demand profile (−12% from 2018 level) yields 16% lower yearly costs compared to a business-as-usual higher heat demand. In the WIND-scenario, improving the lower heat demand in 2050 could save the annual system 6–13% in terms of cost, depending on the scale of wind power.


Inventions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Hasanali Khojasteh ◽  
Younes Noorollahi ◽  
Mojtaba Tahani ◽  
Mehran Masdari

Nowadays, by increasing energy demand and considering the importance of environmental issues in recent decades, the use of renewable energies is expanding. Among renewable energies, wind power and its technology are growing and evolving more rapidly. Resource assessment in Iran has revealed the significant potential of wind energy around the country. To further develop wind energy in the country and create large-scale wind power plants, the consideration of distributed power generation using small wind turbines for applications in agricultural and residential use is needed. Conventional small wind turbines and small wind lens turbines have been developed in recent years. In this research project, a small wind lens turbine is designed. The advantages of this turbine are an increased production capacity and reduced cut-in speed and noise pollution. In this study, a lens (or shroud) is added to a small turbine, and the maximized annual energy production (AEP) and minimization of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) are modeled. We applied the NSGA-II algorithm for optimization to find the best answer. The input parameters in the objective function of the AEP are cut-in, cut-out, rated speeds, scale factor, and shape factor. Additionally, the input parameters in the objective function of the LCOE are the power production, initial capital cost, annual operating expenses, and balance of energy. The results indicate that installing a wind lens turbine in Kish Island led to an LCOE decrease of 56% on average, and we can see an 83% increase in the AEP. In the Firoozkooh area, an average reduction of 59% in the LCOE and 74% increase in the AEP for a wind lens turbine is observed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo García-Herrera ◽  
Jose M. Garrido-Perez ◽  
Carlos Ordóñez ◽  
David Barriopedro ◽  
Daniel Paredes

<p><span><span>We have examined the applicability of a new set of 8 tailored weather regimes (WRs) to reproduce wind power variability in Western Europe. These WRs have been defined using a substantially smaller domain than those traditionally used to derive WRs for the North Atlantic-European sector, in order to maximize the large-scale circulation signal on wind power in the region of study. Wind power is characterized here by wind capacity factors (CFs) from a meteorological reanalysis dataset and from high-resolution data simulated by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. We first show that WRs capture effectively year-round onshore wind power production variability across Europe, especially over northwestern / central Europe and Iberia. Since the influence of the large-scale circulation on wind energy production is regionally dependent, we have then examined the high-resolution CF data interpolated to the location of more than 100 wind farms in two regions with different orography and climatological features, the UK and the Iberian Peninsula. </span></span></p><p><span><span>The use of WRs allows discriminating situations with varied wind speed distributions and power production in both regions. In addition, the use of their monthly frequencies of occurrence as predictors in a multi-linear regression model allows explaining up to two thirds of the month-to-month CF variability for most seasons and sub-regions. These results outperform those previously reported based on Euro-Atlantic modes of atmospheric circulation. The improvement achieved by the spatial adaptation of WRs to a relatively small domain seems to compensate for the reduction in explained variance that may occur when using yearly as compared to monthly or seasonal WR classifications. In addition, our annual WR classification has the advantage that it allows applying a consistent group of WRs to reproduce day-to-day wind speed variability during extreme events regardless of the time of the year. As an illustration, we have applied these WRs to two recent periods such as the wind energy deficit of summer 2018 in the UK and the surplus of March 2018 in Iberia, which can be explained consistently by the different combinations of WRs.</span></span></p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linna Hou

This paper focuses on the impacts of renewable energy policy on a large-scale power generation system, including thermal power, hydropower, and wind power generation. As one of the most important clean energy, wind energy has been rapidly developed in the world. But in recent years there is a serious waste of wind power equipment and investment in China leading to many problems in the industry from wind power planning to its integration. One way overcoming the difficulty is to analyze the influence of wind power policy on a generation system. This paper builds a system dynamics (SD) model of energy generation to simulate the results of wind energy generation policies based on a complex system. And scenario analysis method is used to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of these policies. The case study shows that the combinations of lower portfolio goal and higher benchmark price and those of higher portfolio goal and lower benchmark price have large differences in both effectiveness and efficiency. On the other hand, the combinations of uniformly lower or higher portfolio goal and benchmark price have similar efficiency, but different effectiveness. Finally, an optimal policy combination can be chosen on the basis of policy analysis in the large-scale power system.


2011 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 97-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang Liang ◽  
Jian Lin Li ◽  
Dong Hui

Recently, more and more people realize the importance of environment protection. Electric power generation systems using renewable energy sources have an advantage of no greenhouse effect gas emission. Among all the choices, wind power can offer an economic and environmentally friendly alternative to conventional methods of power supply. As a result, wind energy generation, utilization and its grid penetration in electrical grid is increasing world wide. The wind generated power is always fluctuating due to its time varying nature and causing stability problem. Inserting energy storage system into large scale wind farm to eliminate the fluctuation becomes a solution for developing large scale renewable energy system connected with grid. The topology diagram and control strategy are presented in this paper. According to the simulation result, it could be indicated that embedding energy storage system into wind power system could improve the access friendly and extend system functions. This paper shows that integrating energy storage system into wind power system will build a more reliable and flexible system for power grid.


2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 273-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Ling ◽  
Andy Linehan

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) adopted wind power guidelines in 2002 to promote standardisation of the agency's responses to proposed wind energy projects in Washington State. While the purpose of the guidelines was to create consistency from the agency, some of the recommendations seemed overly stringent and unjustified to the wind industry. Recognising the implications of the guidelines on wind energy development in the State, the Renewable Northwest Project (RNP), along with industry members and their permitting consultants, successfully engaged the agency in a discussion to reach fair and consistent wind power guidelines. The account and methods of negotiation are detailed as an example for abating possible adverse avian and habitat environmental impact of wind farms. The three key areas of negotiation were: pre-permit environmental studies, wildlife and habitat mitigation, and an alternative fee-based mitigation option.


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