The numbers behind the greenwash at Lincoln Financial Field

No commentary, just numbers.

In advance, here's my results:

	capacity	capacity factor	average output	% of total
Natural gas/"bio"diesel	7.6 MW	77%	5.84 MW	98.5%
Solar panels	0.5 MW	14.5%	0.073 MW	1.2%
Vertical wind turbines	0.36 MW	5%	0.018 MW	0.3%

[Philadelphia Inquirer] Eagles aim to turn Lincoln Financial Field into world's greenest stadium

In the parking lot - not where the fans park - the Eagles will build a cogeneration power plant that can run on biodiesel or natural gas.

The capacity of the plant will be 7.6 megawatts; the solar and wind together will add only .86 of a megawatt.

In short, natural gas.

[Philadelphia Eagles] Lincoln Financial Field Will Be Powered With On-Site, Renewable Energy By September 2011

The Eagles have contracted with Orlando FL-based SolarBlue, a renewable energy and energy conservation company, to install approximately 80 20-foot spiral-shaped wind turbines on the top rim of the stadium...

No source explicitly names these turbines, but I fairly sure they are these ones (S594 -- the 19.8-foot model):

http://www.helixwind.com/en/product.php

http://www.helixwind.com/en/S594.php

Under this assumption, 80*4.5 kW = 360 kW of wind turbines, so the remainder (860 kW - 360 kW = 500 kW) is the solar panels.

How much wind power? The most optimistic number is the manufacturer's advertised figure: 3,362 kWh/year per turbine. Out of 4.5 kW nameplate capacity, this is a pitiable 8.5% capacity factor -- but that's the optimistic figure. In the footnote it mentions the assumed conditions: 7 m/s annual average wind speed (15.7 mph). Wildly optimistic.

The Philadelphia Inquirer article reported the average sustained winds as 8 - 10.9 mph, or 3.6 - 4.9 m/s (I think these numbers are at weather station elevation, 10 meters (33 feet)):

National Weather Service statistics show that monthly average wind speeds at nearby Philadelphia International Airport ranged from 8 miles an hour in August to 10.9 miles an hour in March.

Likewise, NREL statistics put Philadelphia in the worst wind category, 0 - 5.6 m/s (0 - 12.5 mph) annual average at 50 meters (164 feet) above ground level.

NREL | Wind Maps

Compare with the manufacturers' power curves:

Even at the upper limit of Philly 50-meter winds (5.6 m/s average), the range of expected output is from only 2,000 kWh/year down to roughly zero. The highest figure corresponds to 5% capacity factor, though, seeing the ranges involved, this is still wildly optimistic.

2,000 kWh/year per turbine * 80 turbines = 160,000 kWh/year = 18 kW average. Hilariously, this costs $1.28 million at retail price.

On to solar. NREL maps say this place gets roughly 4.5 kWh/year/m^2 for optimally-oriented flat plate (i.e. not sun-following) solar panels. (This is under "PV Solar Radiation (Flat Plate, Facing South, Latitude Tilt)—Static Maps" > "Annual")

NREL | Solar Maps

Note that solar nameplate capacities are measured at 1 kW/m^2 irradiance (standard test conditions), so that assuming linear power/irradiance (very reasonable) 4.5 kWh/day/m^2 represents a capacity factor of 18.8%. Or close; this is the module's best-case DC output -- as NREL details, AC output would be around 0.77 of this (the "performance ratio"). So the capacity factor is around 14.5%.

(As a sanity check, the E.C. has a more sophisticated European map which does exactly the same calculation -- they assume a performance ratio of 0.75)

So in all: 14% * 500 kW = 614 kWh/year = 70 kW average output.

The surprisingly high capacity factor of the gas generator (why?) comes from this figure:

The Eagles and SolarBlue estimate that over the 20-year horizon, the on-site energy sources at Lincoln Financial Field will provide 1.039 billion kilowatt hours of electricity

[Philadelphia Eagles] Lincoln Financial Field Will Be Powered With On-Site, Renewable Energy By September 2011

Subtracting off the solar+wind generation, this leaves 1.024 billion kWh (basically all of it) to the 7.6 MW gas generator -- 77% capacity factor.

NREL | Wind Maps

NREL | Solar Maps

Mendacious propaganda in the Times

His company, Invenergy, had a contract to sell power to a utility in Virginia, but state regulators rejected the deal, citing the recession and the lower prices of natural gas and other fossil fuels.

“The ratepayers of Virginia must be protected from costs for renewable energy that are unreasonably high,” the regulators said. Wind power would have increased the monthly bill of a typical residential customer by 0.2 percent.

[NYT] Cost of Green Power Makes Projects Tougher Sell

Enough wind to power a negligible fraction of Virginia would have cost the whole state a 0.2% increase. Slimy math indeed. (The amount of wind involved was only 201 MW nameplate capacity -- equal to maybe 40-60 MW output averaged).

With such clever statistics, the NYT readers were successfully bamboozled. Look at what they've been tricked into thinking:

When Natural gas prices skyrocket again, we will still be stuck using natural gas, we won't have the wind energy to switch over to because people don't want their energy prices to go up 0.2% ?

I keep seeing figures like .2 % and .7%. I assume then that on a 1,000$ electricity bill the horrendous discretionary pain would amount to either a total of 2 or 7 dollars. This is a tiny amount to ensure our energy future and independence.

Twenty to ninety cents per HUNDRED dollars is "too much to pass along to the ratepayers"??? Did these regulators say that when the price of fossil fuels doubled or tripled, generating utility rate increases of twenty to ninety DOLLARS per hundred?

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/science/earth/08fossil.html

This is how manipulative, propagnadistic shills like Matthew Wald and Tom Zeller do their dirty work.

Although, at least one reader ('js' from New York, #53) was clever enough to notice something was awry:

I have a hard time believing that, as the article says, a switch to wind would produce only a 0.2% increase in monthly bills -- how could this be when kilowatt hour tariffs for wind are 3x-4x the price of fossil fuels. Assuming the cost of energy is one-half of the total bill (transmission, distribution, etc being the other half), doesn't that mean consumer bills would more than double?

Annual CT scans for your health?

A new NCI study on the benefits of X-ray computed tomography (CT),

[WSJ] CT Scans Aid Lung-Cancer Screening, Study Shows

[NYT] CT Scans Can Reduce Lung Cancer Deaths, Study Finds

...shows significant life extension from annual CT scans, albeit in a very high-risk group (heavy smokers age 55-74). Quoting the WSJ article:

After receiving three annual tests, study participants where then followed for up to five years with deaths from any documented cause, including lung cancer.

As of Oct. 20, a total of 354 deaths from lung cancer had occurred among participants in the CT arm of the study compared to 442 lung-cancer deaths among those in the X-ray group. The difference between the groups was a 20.3% reduction in lung-cancer deaths favoring the CT arm of the study.

The mechanism thought responsible is the simple one -- CT scans enable early detection, so better chances of treatment. Quoting the NYT article:

Lung cancer claims about 160,000 lives each year, more than the deaths from colorectal, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers combined. In most patients, the disease is discovered too late for effective treatment, and 85 percent of those who are diagnosed with lung cancer die from it.

Until now, no screening method had proven to be effective at reducing mortality from the disease. Four randomized, controlled trials done during the 1970s showed that chest X-rays helped to catch cancers at an earlier stage, but had no effect on overall death rates. Since then, researchers have suggested that CT scans — which use coordinated X-rays to provide three-dimensional views of body tissue — could detect lung tumors at an even earlier stage than X-rays could, but no trial had shown conclusively that deaths could be averted.

Are preventative CT scans in the future? The helical CT chest scan in the study gives a radiation dose of about 8 mSv (0.8 rem) -- equal to more than a hundred chest x-rays. Annual CT scans would increase total radiation exposure from all sources by a factor of 3. The effects of low-dose radiation more than ever deserve serious research. We cannot continue to rely on untested, highly conservative risk estimates based on the LNT hypothesis; overestimating the hazards of radiation would needlessly impede useful medical imaging.

Some posts on this subject by Steve Packard (Depleted Cranium):

[Depleted Cranium] Scaremongering, Cancer and Medical Imaging

[Depleted Cranium] More Scaremongering About “Radiation Exposure” from Medical Imaging.

(Also related: [Depleted Cranium] New Target For Radiation Scaremongering: Thyroid Cancer Patients)