The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms 681
DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of 'superhighways' to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you know?
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary doesn't match TFA. (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary is a crock and doesn't match the quoted article.
Transporting large and variable amounts of generated power is the dual of feeding large and varying loads. The power grid can handle it just fine.
The problem TFA alludes to is that, while cities and industrial plants already have fat lines to them from the rest of the grid, windfarms are new construction generally sited in rural areas that don't already have a "fat pipe" available. So (for a wind farm bigger than about twice the local load) you have to run some new lines.
Just like you would if you built a new auto plant or aluminum smelter in the same location.
It's a regular line, just like the ones feeding loads. It just happens to be running the power the other way.
Of course some people would love to get the government to pay for the line to their new wind farm, rather than bearing that expense as part of the project. And some people in government would love to have more authority and a bigger budget. So we get FUD like this.
Oh, I thought the dirty little secret of wind powe (Score:2, Interesting)
was that the majority of farms produced less than 20% of their rated power per year.
Amazing that Pelosi likes them, wait, no its not, she's invested in them, in particular that guy from Texas.
I am all for a super transport system but I want it backed by nuclear to handle base loads and allow us to truly get coal off line. If its good enough to have Germany switch gears what is our problem?
I am so sick of a Congress more concerned about piss ant groups, having to many to satisfy, that we get the shaft.
Nothing new here (Score:5, Interesting)
If area A has a surplus but area B needs power, and the lines cannot handle the transmission, then the price for electricity in B goes up. This is a complex case of supply and demand. The grid is a lot more fragile than it appears. In many places there is a desperate need for more generation/transmission, but the anti-infrastructure people are driving up the cost of electricity by not allowing infrastructure improvements to be made.
I worked at one plant that had to erect a huge sound wall around the entire plant. It worked great, but cost around $2 million including all the sound studies etc. The people next door claimed they never knew when the plant was operating (clear exhaust). We CAN build large power plants in your backyard, and you won't even know they are there- aside from the plant staff spending it up in local businesses.
Why yes, I do work in the power industry.
cascade overloads possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the whole north-east grid will fall like it did 2003 each time a cold front move through the region... The big blackout even showed that the conditions to create a cascade of overloads shutting down the whole grid are possible. Could the power surge caused by all wind turbine getting into action simultaneously create similar power pulses through the grid, jumping the safeties like it did in 2003?
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Interesting)
We can have all of the solar, wind, water and nuclear power in the world but it doesn't mean a thing if it can't be easily transferred from the places it can be generated to places where it's needed.
Why do you assert it needs to be transferred long distances? We already have an infrastructure that can provide 24x7 power everywhere, from fossil fuel and nuclear plants. We don't have to throw that away or duplicate that in order to add green energy into the mix. Those renewable sources produce relatively small amounts of power, at varying times of the day, at varying locations. That doesn't mean they can't interact with the grid, providing power where they can and actually alleviating the load on long distance lines by effectively reducing the power drawn at the periphery of the grid. Indeed, there is _less_ power lost in transmission when they're closer to the load. And TFA is full of shit - wires don't get "congested".
Yes there is "trapped" energy in places where, for example, there is lots of sunlight hitting open land but no people nearby to consume it. We can't effectively tap those resources yet. That doesn't support your point whatsoever, and it's certainly nothing to be "screaming about".
I suspect your parents who work at the local power company are simply regurgitating the company PR line, and perhaps you should do your own research and exercise some critical thought in forming your own opinions.
Re:The Feds (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... if it's between not having wind power, and having electrical lines explodify every time the wind blows, I'll take the no wind power. Federal regulation isn't always bad. We have to thank bureacratic red tape for keeping thalidomide out of the country before we realized it doesn't just cure morning sickness, it also makes your children not have arms and legs. The company selling the stuff was going nuts without testing.
This is a much more cut and dry situation that might not need regulation, but let's keep perspective.
So why isn't this a problem in Europe? (Score:2, Interesting)
This doesn't seem to be a problem with the massive offshore wind farms in Europe. The UK, Denmark, etc, all are using more and more wind power each month from wind farms in the North Sea. No-one's ever said that the power grid can't handle it.
Hydroelectric (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you do in places that don't have sufficient wind for wind power?
Those who do pump water uphill; those who don't, take what they need from said body of water.
Hydroelectric isn't the flavour de jour, but is notable for having the opposite qualities from those of windpower, in that it is able to manage variable demand extremely well, and absorb surpluses on the grid.
Railway Electrification As Political Strategy (Score:5, Interesting)
This is crucial to the wind energy advocates (and all other electrical energy source advocates) as a consequence of the following facts:
1) The main goal of public policy reform of wind energy advocates is to put into place transmission lines to carry electricity from the high wind potential areas (such as the Midwest) to the high utilization areas (such as the coasts).
2) The main obstacle to constructing said transmission lines is the delays suffered by projects subjected to environmental impact litigation following from attempts to obtain rights of way.
3) The main motive for said environmental impact litigation is a misguided environmental movement's tendency to see any increase of capacity in the nation's energy capacity as harmful to the environment. This cannot be addressed directly in legislation (as has already been attempted, btw) due to the fact that the environmentalist tactic is to use legal tricks to get the courts to delay implementation of systems until the time value of those systems has run out.
4) The electrification of railroads is a proven technology -- indeed the largest railroad line in the world, the Trans-Siberian, is electrified.
5) The "conservation only" environmentalists will not oppose going to electrified railroads since they already see decreasing the energy use of railways and increase of railroad utilization -- which would result from railroad electrification -- as a way of reducing the nation's energy utilization.
6) The railroads already have rights of way that approximate the topology and coverage of transmission lines required to distribute wind electricity from sources to destinations.
7) The use of cryogenic transmission lines buried under the tracks would render the transmission capacity of virtually all existing railroad rights of way enormously greater than the possible use by the railways.
No Oil for Volts! (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing that occurred to me is that this entire article and all it represents are merely a ploy on the part of Big Oil to put the idea of wind power in a bad light. [emph. added]
Only 1.1% of US electricity is from oil, and that is as a stopgap when a coal train is delayed etc., and the rare use of petroleum coke.
Why do people think we burn oil for electricity? The research is very easy to do:
eia.doe.gov
I've got it memorized just for these occasions. EIA dot DOE dot GOV
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html [doe.gov]
Electricity comes from coal, nuclear, and natural gas in that order.
I guess it's just easier to make up a conspiracy theory that fits political prejudice than do any actual research or thought.
Stored power (Score:5, Interesting)
As of 2000, stored power to the tune of about 2.5% of the US load (19.5 gigawatts) was online in the form of Pumped Storage [wikipedia.org]. The EU had 32 gigawatts.
There's plenty of room to do more of that out in the desert; it can be subsurface, so as to have little or no long-term impact on the environment (obviously construction would temporarily beat up the habitat, though.) All pumped storage requires are wires, pumps, generators, a couple of big storage systems (one uphill, one down), and water. Doesn't have to be fresh water, either. The larger the height difference, the more energy can be stored. It's lossy; but still, it is both clean and effective.
Companies like EEStor that are working to create ultracapacitors with storage capacities exceeding those of batteries may be key to storage; storage can be local, on a per-unit basis which insulates users from the myriad types of grid failures that occur. It also allows them to store power locally if they generate any themselves (solar, etc.) Ultracaps are good for moderate term storage without much loss, and they can be fused in such a way as to prevent huge power discharges in case of accidents, so they're pretty safe.
There are some other contenders - flywheels, for instance -- but do *you* want an aging flywheel, high mass, high speed, coming apart in your basement? Me either. I saw a 4-inch grinder wheel come apart once and chunks of it outright severed a 2x4 in the wall next to the workbench. So those are probably best left in large scale storage farms.
Aside from storage, the thing that has always amazed me is that solar never seems to become really affordable. No matter how many ways they make it, or what tech they use, somehow, I can't buy inexpensive panels that will cope with hot summers, cold winters, and rain. New printing process? Ultra cheap cells? Mass production? Sure, I hear about those. But for SOME reason, all their output is bought up, and I can't buy the stuff. Not to get out the tinfoil, but if nothing else, it is very annoying.
Re:HVDC FTW? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stored power (Score:5, Interesting)
the industrial components already exist for salt and it's fairly non toxic and cheap to operate and build.
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Interesting)
The best part is that we already have a place to put the lines.
The interstate highway system already covers most of the country and links all the major population centers. They should bury all the superconductors in the median between the lanes.
It's not like anyone is using that land right now alway
Re:It's about time (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds good to me... Many many megawatts of capacity can come from solar and wind, and it's generated closest to where it's used, minimizing line losses. What's the problem?
The example they use is that midwest wind-farms can't send power to the coasts... WTF?
California is quite likely the windiest place in the US. Excluding tornadoes, the midwest can't hope to compete with the daily hurricane-force winds across all the mountain passes and deserts in CA.
And it's not just CA. How about the Cape Wind Project? Just about any coastal community is going to have substantial and steady wind at their disposal. Honestly, just check out the map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_wind_power_map.png [wikipedia.org]
And why the fixation on maxing out wind power? Because T.B. Pickens wants to get the most out of his investment, and get the Fed to pick up as much of the check as possible? What happened to solar?
Nearly every place in the US that isn't great for wind, is very favorable to solar. The entire southern half of the US could get by on solar, and skip wind turbines all together. That's just doubly true for the south-west. Again, see the map for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_pv_annual_may2004.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Between the two options, where is it, exactly, that we can't locally generate all the energy needed? Seems to be pretty solid coverage, without the need for a national grid roll-out to get the Fed to subsidize the midwestern states. Of all the issues the grid has, the limited ultra-long-haul capacity (and correspondingly high losses) would be the last on my list.
Re:Ok... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh, THAT'S It! (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that is done with excess power here in the US is pump
water to a high resevoir, and it can later be run thru the
turbines to generate hydro power as needed.
It is done during the fall/winter/spring at night at Hoover dam.
Lower demand due to less Air Conditioning usage.
The power from the Windmills could pump water to water tanks
on tall hills or even mountains.
The extra pressure could be used for power generation, and then
down pressured sent on to homes.
Here in the US in the mountains some ppl due that for Micro Hydro.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
One idea I had for places that had slow wind, but constant wind
was a "Wind Focus".
Basically something like sail cloth that acts like a Venturi
nozzle and takes wind from a large area and focus it onto
a smaller area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi_effect [wikipedia.org]
If you did not want to engineer the sail cloth for high
storm winds then you would need to add in some release
method to let it just blow past once the wind exceeded
a certain threshold.
So it would do its job in low winds, and just get out of the
way in high winds.
Counter weights might do the trick ;)
Wind may not be green (Score:3, Interesting)
I have come to be much more skeptical of wind. Owing to the chance of weeks of becalmed weather over a continental landmass, every kilowatt of wind generation needs to be backed up somehow with fossil generation. In other words, wind power does not replace any fossil fuel generation capacity, it merely supplements it to reduce the total amount of fuel burned. And given the variability of wind, wind needs to be sized for peak rating some multiple -- 5 times? more according to European experience? -- of the average amount of power and fossil fuel replacement you can expect. So what degree of CO2 reduction can you expect with a wind-power supplement to your fossil power plants -- maybe 20 percent? Both from a global warming perspective and a fuel-substitution perspective to move stationary users of oil to electricity, you need much more than 20 percent.
It seems that wind is popular and getting various kinds of support, monetary and otherwise on account of its "zero carbon" nature, but I no longer see it as zero carbon, merely as carbon reducing for the fossil power plants, and there must be other ways than filling the landscape with wind turbines to get similar levels of carbon reduction.
I see the "green marketing" of wind power where your power company offers to charge you more "to get your power from wind" as a kind of carbon-offset scam. You pay more for power with the assurance that your power is "carbon neutral." If wind received the widespread application to make a real difference in carbon emission, and the people who sign up for wind power regard themselves as early adopters of what is believed to become a much larger scale operation, you are perhaps at best "reducing your carbon footprint" from electricity by 20 percent, which is much more cost effective to achieve through household energy efficiency than through wind power.
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
[sigh]
Yes, it is true that no alternative power source can quickly and immediately replace an infrastructure that took about a century to put in place.
It is also true that the amount of solar energy that falls on the US exceeds our total power consumption by many times, even accounting for the low efficiency of PV and solar thermal collectors. Here's a snippet from wikipedia (where it references a page from Stanford -- you can chase the links yourselves): "The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined."
It is also true that the available wind power amounts to many times the total amount of energy consumed by the US (you can look it up yourself -- it's also a ginormous number).
Finally, Google's recent investment into Enhanced Geothermal Systems highlights the potential to pull energy from the latent heat within drilling range, using more economical technologies than have previously been utilized. There is a 2006 MIT pdf on Enhanced Geothermal Systems which shows that there also, we find available reclaimable energy capable of satisfying our total energy needs many times over.
If wind power is inconstant, over-build, and generate far more power than we need on average, and use the excess to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen to drive fuel cells during the calm periods. The odds of having a lengthy calm period that extends over much of the US is practically nil. Same thing for solar power -- build out more than you need, and use the surplus to split water (which covers 3/4 of the planet) into hydrogen and oxygen. If a nation the size of Germany with limited resources (compared to the US) can commit to 100% alternative energy, there's no reason why the US cannot do so as well, with our much larger supplies of available energy and much larger economic resources.
But with such a variety of available and abundant energy sources, we don't need to overbuild, the point is to utilize each of them where they can provide the most impact (e.g., solar for peak utilization, which occurs during the day), and build an enhanced distribution grid (again, we're going to need to anyhow) to move electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed, just like we do today.
Wind power generates voltage spikes? So use flywheel technologies (e.g., Beacon Power (BCON)) to spin flywheels, and generate clean, regulated power from the flywheels. This is technology that exists today. It will even serve as a store of energy, to level out brief lulls in the output. New technologies require (and always receive) improvements as we learn how to best utilize them. Our experience with them improves them.
The point is, we CAN replace ALL our existing fossil fuel power generation infrastructure -- we have to anyway, due to obsolescence and planned upgrades -- we just can't do it quickly. It took us about a century to build what we have, we won't be replacing it in only a decade.
But we can gain a decade or so by making it an active conversion, by purposefully moving to alternative power, instead of waiting until it is enough cheaper than coal to make it the selection of choice. According to some sources, wind is already price-competitive with coal, and there is a lot of improvement left in the technologies to extract energy from wind. Not so much from coal.
Re:Reduce consumption to balance load (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's for the Americans to work out. Meanwhile Germany is pumping ~1GW of EXCESS power from rooftop solar panels back on to their grid. They estimate they have cut their CO2 emmissions by ~100 million tons. This change has increased the average German power bill by about one euro/month.
Continental scale infrastructure is a long term thing for humans, you can't notice it changing until you have lived the several decades it takes to see the change. Nobody is talking about covering every US roof with solar panels before next xmas, even with huge subsidies it would still take decades.
So what is wrong with upgrading/extending the grid as the need from rooftop PV arises? - I'm sure the current grid has seen quite a bit of upgrading since 1958 and I would be surprised if any power plants from the 50's are still operating today, IIRC most plants have a planned lifetime of 30-40yrs.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
So you are saying, they run water through the turbines to generate electricity to pump that water back up behind the dam?
A hydro system is not an island.
They use cheap power from other base load power stations to pump the water back up the hill overnight, then let it rip during peak hours.
Re:Scary thought! (Score:3, Interesting)
"That is why power in the Pacific Northwest is much cheaper than in many other places. If there was a way to get more of that power to California, then the present rates would skyrocket."
You couldn't be more wrong on that.
http://www.koze950.com/2007/07/23/states-seek-rehearing-on-power-subsidy/ [koze950.com]
For nearly 30 years, the BPA (being a gov agency isn't allowed to keep their wholesale profit) has been charging out of region, private buyers of the Northwest's dam power a slight amount more (~$.05), and using those profits to subsidize the local buyer's rates. There's been a long debate over that practice, but, everyone is still getting a much cheaper rate compared to what private, profit based competition charges consumers.
Re:Thermal power works on economy of scale (Score:3, Interesting)
Check again on both words :)
Ignore the fuel source for the moment and just consider the basics of thermal power generation - it is still steam (or close enough to it). The more steam the easier it is to get energy out of it - for instance low pressure, intermediate pressure and high pressure turbines instead of a single turbine aimed at the midpoint.
This is typically why you see two sizes of nuclear plant - as big as you can get for civilian power generation purposes and tiny little things barely in the megawatt size for research and military purposes.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
In a way, lots of houses in the Netherlands are already heated in this way [wikipedia.org]. Except the water tank isn't really as big as you think.
The amount of water stored is usually enough to fill up a bathtub, while the heater takes its time to (efficiently) heat up the next batch of water for you.
Keep in mind that this system needs about 20 minutes to start to be effective to heat up a house (longer than air-based heating).
1. The water heats the pipes and the radiators.
2. When warmed up, the radiators heat the air.
3. When the air heats up, it starts to (slowly) circulate its way around the house (hot air rises, travels and comes down when it cools)
4. When enough hot air has circulated, the room will be 'warm'.
This means programmable heating controllers in every house and, if you get home unexpected, sitting in the freezing cold for half an hour.
(no, you don't get used to it).
Also, this system cannot be used to cool houses.
First, the cold air will simply sit there at the bottom of the radiator and slowly grow, providing you with cold feet.
Second, actually cooling the air around the radiator means it has to be VERY COLD. Think sub-zero. (heating requires water at around 200F)
To make matters worse, the water still needs to be heated, preferably by gas mains. Take a look at the economics section of the link above to see the cost of running this.
Re:Ok... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you considered the amount of energy required to move the hydrogen?
Electrolysis creates hydrogen GAS, which may have to be liquified (expensive), then moved (truck/pipeline).
Then consider the efficiency.
First off, you have the efficiency of the device generating electricity.
Then, loss before/during transport
Then, efficiency loss when running the fuel cell.
When you combine all those factors, is it still worth the investment?
(People forget that their pluggable electric car still charges off the grid, have you seem your local power plant?)
Re:Scary thought! (Score:3, Interesting)
....but, everyone is still getting a much cheaper rate compared...
to California electricity users. My sister pays almost double what we pay in Oregon. If there were a way to ship more power to CA, then we would also have to pay more. Yes, our rates did go up and it is not clear to me who is now getting that extra money. The two main power lines between the Northwest and California are loaded to capacity most of the time. In the summer, power flows south and in the winter it comes north. We have no air-conditioning but use electric for heat in addition to a wood stove. In CA lots of power is used to keep cool and not much to keep warm.
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately it took the cold war, and Dwight Eisenhower (war hero from WW2) as president to convince congress that an interstate system was a national defense issue (to allow ease of troop transportation in the event of an invasion).
It's obvious that we've reaped the benefits from that military expense, but would congress have spent the money if it was considered a civil project?
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
...but germany COULD have invested in wind power just the same way, and could currently be generating 3+GW of excess power instead of 1, and doing it centrally in a fashion that's easier to account for in the grid and cheaper to compensate for in off-peak (sun set) hours. This would have offest the average power bill by about 4 euros per month, which would have led to MORE wind power at a faster rate...
Also, current solar technology on single family homes can account for typically 70% or less than their energy use. Some homes are lickier than others, but most homes can not self produce 100% power. Further, most people live in multi-family homes, not singles, and shared roof space is insufficient. Covering every roof in the entire country would not produce enough power to offset the use, and the cost of doing so woul dbe close to 5X the cost of a similar producing wind farm.
Power Grid 2.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
In answer to your question, it's because I've seen what power utility monopolies do. Where I live National Grid is the monopoly in both power and natural gas.
We just got hit with a 21% price increase for electricity and numerous nickle and dime increases for natural gas.
What irritates me about the natural gas side is that they already charge us for distribution, and it's a significant sum. So why do they have to hike our rates on that side so they can pay to upgrade the lines. Shouldn't they have been doing that all along?
The most recent one has them wanting to pass advertising costs to it's customer base in order to attract more people to use natural gas to heat their homes.
So there you see the reason.
Re:Scary thought! (Score:3, Interesting)
The airline example is really bad because they have never changed their business model and it is more broke dick than the recording industry in today's world.
The last thing we need is more power in Washington. Actually it's time to take some back. That is what the Second Amendment is really about.