On Jul 8, 2009, at 12:12 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
And thus we see the basic flaw in wind generation. Unless a backup
source of power is in place and can be connected to an active grid,
wind power is not practical.
My comment clearly applied to the US. The situation in Europe is
different, as Jed notes. Europe has invested in its distribution
system because most transportation of goods and people is carried by
electric trains. The US has not made this investment because most
transportation here is by cars and trucks, which do not use electric
power. As a result, the US went down a different road compared to
Europe and is now paying the price.
Ed
This is incorrect. EPRI and European power companies that have a lot
experience with wind power say that most present-day distribution
systems can accommodate up to 20% wind power with little or no
additional equipment. They say fluctuations in demand are a much
bigger problem than fluctuations in output from wind. Over a large
geographic area, wind output is highly predictable, even several
days in advance, so it can be planned for.
Also, it degrades slowly and in small increments compared to other
power sources. In some ways wind is more predictable and stable than
other sources. When something goes wrong with a coal or gas fired
plant, a large chunk of capacity goes off line immediately and in an
unplanned manner. When a nuclear power plant SCRAMs you can lose
half the power in the state. In contrast, if the wind is not quite
as strong as predicted, the difference is minor. If there is very
little wind, they know about it hours or days in advance and they
can plan for it.
Having said that, Terry is quite right that putting 4 GW of wind
power in one place would be an engineering nightmare. Putting 4 GW
of nuclear power in one place would be an economic nightmare. Nukes
are only good for baseline, 24-hour electricity. As far as I know,
the only place with such concentrated power is in Japan, where the
whole country is in a tight grid so they can distribute that much
power. The biggest in the world is Kashiwazaki-kariwa, 8 GW, owned
by Tokyo Electric Power, which is smack in the middle of nowhere in
Niigata, far from Tokyo:
http://www2.jnes.go.jp/atom-db/en/general/atomic/ke02a13/info_h.html
This was hit by an earthquake in July 2007, taking out a large
fraction of all of the electricity in Japan. It is fully back on
line now, I believe.
The power lines from Niigata to Tokyo are awesome. They are among
the biggest with the highest voltage in the world. I saw an NHK
program about the construction of them. Maintenance is done by
helicopter.
- Jed
