>Margaret:
>
>Thank you for this interesting article on challenges for wind energy.
>
>I am presently working for a renewable energy firm in NE Ohio (but plan on
>moving to Ithaca shortly) and much of my work revolves around analyzing
>sites for potential wind power.
>
>I completely agree with you that Conservation is certainly the most crucial
>place where we can reduce energy needs and save money. As opposed to
>"conservation light" (switching lightbulbs and upgrading appliances) energy
>scarcity is likely to demand for us to adopt "radical conservation"
>strategies.
>
>As for wind--it certainly is an intermittent resource. I recently read (and
>I will attempt to find it for you) a paper by a German University that
>outlined a strategy to transition to a fossil fuel-free electricity
>generation infrastructure by 2020. First, they used a combination of PV
>solar and wind power which are, to an extent, complimentary. That is, he
>wind tends to blow when the sun is not out, and the sun tends to be out when
>the wind is not blowing. Baseline power generation and spikes in demand
>were proposed to be moderated by the use of biomass power generation. On an
>early post, I highlighted the production of biochar using pyrolysis which
>produces electricity from high-lignin feedstocks such as switchgrass, forest
>waste, and crop residues. This makes for a pretty tidy system... rely on
>wind and solar when you have it, start burning the biomass (and sequestering
>the carbon) when you need more.
>
>Of course, the challenge is going to be building this infrastructure as we
>face peaking of gas and oil supplies.
>
>Medium-scale and microhydo is certainly an option I am very interested in
>learning more about for community scale power generation. I see that
>Renovus has information posted about systems. Has there been any work done
>to quantify the amount of energy that could be potentially be generated in
>the County using medium and small scale hydro systems?
>
> I know that within the Permaculture World capturing and storing water at
>the highest point of one's landscape offers the ability to control the
>direction and flow of water to various area's on one's land. Often this is
>done using buildings with roofs that provide adequate surface area for
>collecting water and directly into some sort of container whether it be
>ferro-cement tank, pond, or 55-gallon drum. With the area's valleys and
>hilly landscape I wonder about the possibility of storing large amounts of
>water in ponds that could be released in a controlled manner in order to
>create on-demand power generation. Thoughts? Ideas?
>
>Look forward to responses.
>
>Thanks,
>Ryan D. Hottle
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Margaret McCasland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>
>> I received this from a Quaker peace and social justice list-serve,
>> where a member received it from a technical list he's on.
> >
>> Grid stability and storage of power from intermittent sources need to
>> be addressed ASAP. I am a big promoter of wind, but renewables will
>> only be able to start replacing coal and nukes after we have balanced
>> wind generation with more solar, more appropriate-scale hydro (which
>> will also be intermittent in many cases, especially as we see more
>> droughts) and LOTS of conservation and efficiency.
>> I also assume that geo-thermal can eventually play a major role in
>> reducing demand for electricity or other forms of power for heating
>> and cooling (because it is not intermittent). --Margaret
>>
>>
>> Too much success too fast exposes problems. An article from a technical
>> mailinglist.
>>
>> /dan
>>
>>
>> Subject: Wind Power Risks
>>
>> It is now becoming more common to hear of wind power caused outages. The
>> outages are either a loss of service because the wind has stopped
>> blowing or, surprisingly, because there is too much wind.
>>
>> These problems were not so apparent when the percentage of wind power
> > was low compared to the overall capacity, and in particular to rapid
>> response generators such as hydro.
>>
>> It seems that wind power has become too successful and the engineering
>> required to integrate it into different grids has lagged behind. In
>> particular, the correct balance is not being achieved between wind power
>> capacity in a region and the available replacement power sources -
>> transmission and local non-base load sources.
>>
>> A recent outage in Texas illustrates the low wind example. An *IEEE
>> Spectrum* article by Peter Fairley explains the overload scenario.
>>
>> The Texas outage on February 27 as reported by Reuters:
>>
>>
>>http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2749522920080228?feedType=RSS&feed
>> Name=domesticNews&rpc=22&sp=true
>>
>> "Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind
>> energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening
>> electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the
>> state.
>>
>> The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan
>> at 6:41 PM CST (0041 GMT), ERCOT said in a statement.
>>
>> System operators curtailed power to interruptible customers to shave
>> 1,100 megawatts of demand within 10 minutes, ERCOT said. Interruptible
>> customers are generally large industrial customers who are paid to
>> reduce power use when emergencies occur."
>>
>> The IEEE article on power surges from wind farms is at
>> http://spectrum.ieee.org/feb08/5943 and the key paragraph is this:
>>
>> Wind-farm installation in Europe grew an estimated 38 percent last year,
>> up from 19 percent in 2006, bringing the total capacity to about 67
>> gigawatts (roughly the equivalent of 20 to 25 standard-size nuclear
>> power
>> plants). At those rates, European grid operators report, windmill
>> construction is outstripping growth in transmission capacity. The result
>> is that in wind-farm-rich countries such as Germany and Denmark, high
>> winds cause large and unanticipated power flows that saturate the
>> grids of neighboring nations. In recent years this has forced grid
>> operators to curtail scheduled transfers of power between grids. In
>> 2008,
>> the grid operators warn, the unanticipated power flows could overload
>> lines
>> anywhere from the Czech Republic to the Netherlands.
>> _______________________________________________
>> For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area,
>> please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
>>
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>
>
>
>--
>Ryan Darrell Hottle
>
>The Renaissance Group
>Program Manager
>www.ConserveFirst.com
>
>Global Climate Solutions
>www.GlobalClimateSolutions.org
>(coming soon!)
>
>Ohio Peak Oil Action (OPOA)
>Co-Founder, Director
>www.ohiopeakoilaction.org
>
>30 N. Rose Blvd.
>Akron, OH 44022
>
>(740) 258 8450
>_______________________________________________
>For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County
>area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
>
>RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
>[email protected]
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_______________________________________________
For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please
visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
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http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
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