“What do you do when the wind stops blowing?”
Well, you relax, for one thing. You could check your email. You might watch the game. Have a beer.
What you wouldn’t do is worry about the electrical grid.
The American Wind Energy Association has released a report that gives a good snapshot of how utilities across the US are integrating wind power into their generation mix with minimal need for extra back up or storage. I covered a lot of this in my first “Wind Energy Solutions” video, above.
Overwrought concerns about wind’s reliability often center on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the grid works, the report indicates. Since its inception more than a century ago, the grid has inherently handled a constant flux of supply and demand. All power sources involve some level of variability, and demand can vary greatly minute by minute. For example, AWEA points to energy demand during a 1990 World Cup game between England and Germany when demand spiked sharply during breaks, presumably as people quickly turned on appliances or electronics then turned them off once the game resumed.
Fluctuations in supply or demand from any given source do not matter to grid operators, said report author and AWEA research director Michael Goggin. All they care about is the total supply and demand on the grid at any given moment. As the AWEA report puts it, “The total variability is far less than the sum of its parts.”
“Grid operators only care about total variability on the power system,” Goggin said. “They don’t care what any one wind plant is doing or even what all wind plants are doing.”
Hence variations in the level of wind energy output are easily smoothed out over the grid as demand also rises and falls frequently and often unpredictably, and as output levels from other energy sources fluctuate. And the more wind power is added to the grid, the less variable wind energy as a whole becomes.
Wind output variations “are being canceled out by totally unrelated changes in supply and demand,” Goggin said. “What happens is you get a very smoothed-down profile across all these sources of variability.”
Goggin said that the variable output of wind is actually in some ways less problematic than variability from conventional power plants. That’s because changes in wind energy can be predicted in advance with considerable accuracy, whereas an outage at a power plant is usually sudden, unexpected and involves a more drastic reduction in power.
– How much does it cost to integrate wind?
Grid operator data show that the cost of the incremental flexible reserves needed to accommodate wind amount to pennies on a typical electric bill. In fact, the cost of accommodating the unexpected failures of large conventional power plants is far higher.
– How much more wind energy can we reliably integrate?
While U.S. and European grid operators have already reliably integrated large amounts of wind energy, studies indicate that we can go far higher. Studies examining obtaining 40% or more of our electricity from wind have found no major obstacles to doing so. Ten years ago some utilities and grid operators were concerned about reaching 5% wind; they now have a lot more experience to draw from, and over the next ten years, they will surely learn more and be able to continue increasing reliable penetration.– Don’t grid operators need to add backup to integrate wind?
No. One of main reasons why an integrated power system was first built more than 100 years ago was so that all power plants could back up all other power plants. Because most sources of variability cancel each other out, having a dedicated backup source for each would be highly inefficient and counterproductive.
– What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?
Other plants provide energy at those times, in the same way that all power plants back up all other power plants. Portfolio diversity is the key, as no resource is available 100% of the time. All power plants have reduced output at times, and grid operators plan for wind’s contribution using the same tools they use to evaluate the contributions of other resources. Adding wind power never increases the need for power plants, but rather reduces it. During a number of events wind has demonstrated its contribution to a more reliable and diverse energy portfolio by stepping in when other resources failed unexpectedly.
– Don’t we need baseload power?
Instead of using the term “baseload,” it is more productive to talk about the three main services the grid needs to operate reliably: energy, capacity, and flexibility. Energy is the production of electricity, capacity is the ability to produce power during periods of high demand, and flexibility is the ability to change output to keep supply and demand in balance. Cost-effectively obtaining all three services requires a division of labor among a diverse mix of energy sources, as no resource excels at providing all three. For example, baseload resources typically do not provide flexibility, and there can be lower-cost ways of obtaining the energy and capacity provided by baseload. Wind energy primarily adds value to an energy portfolio as a low-cost and non-polluting source of energy, though it also provides some capacity and can provide flexibility when it is economic to do so.
One of the best succicnt descriptions of wind power variations I read was:
“Wind power isn’t intermittant – it comes in big oredictable waves.”
It was pointing out that the weather is fairly easily forcast days in advance so it’s not as though the wind can suddenly ‘stop working’ instantly with no warning – unlike nuclear power plants for example.
oops.
predictable waves that is.
Thanks for reminding us that wind power has been with us for a long time, the electric car also appeared in the 1880’s and designs were advancing back then. Petrol dampened a lot of development, but now it is time to move on past fossils and resume where we left off. Japan has been a leader of industry in the 20th century, after the terrible Tsunami it is rediscovering it’s energy options.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/14/145-mw-offshore-wind-power-northern-japan/
Yes, we must accelerate the rapid destruction of rural and wild landscapes, especially mountain ridges that catch the most wind. We must not think of anything else but electricity to power cities many miles from turbines sites. We must trust the most optimistic industry studies about viewsheds, noise and other downsides.
Even Bill McKibben has taken that stance without fully admitting it. He wrote the ironically titled book, The End of Nature, which he now wants to accelerate by building “windmills, all the hell over the place.” (his words from 2003, Orion)
When I see rows of wind turbines blighting some landscape I feel like I’m in a dystopian movie with no happy ending. We could have been putting solar panels on already-built structures, but no, we must stick to the centralized power station model because utilities prefer it. People have always liked to “build big” and brag about it. You see all kinds of reports about “largest wind farm,” “greatest installed capacity” and “tallest wind turbines!” How about letting nature remain the tallest, with trees? Can’t wind-zombies see that these machines are simply too big and white to be Green?
I’d held out hope that Man wouldn’t be stupid enough to wreck the last unspoiled scenery that the true environmental movement fought so hard for, but that hope is gone. Thanks for your efforts, wind-drones.
http://www.visitscotland-windfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Stuc-a-Chroin-Ben-Vorlich01.jpg
The main problem with wind turbines is very evident in Scotland with their rush to install them all over the place for the sake of climate mandates (which I don’t oppose in theory). Wind turbines are the most physically grotesque way to meet those mandates. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, is represented in modern Scotland by the John Muir Trust. Their position on wind turbines counters the “nature needs to be sacrificed” propaganda that Mr. Sinclair and others keep pushing. They aren’t so blinded by anti-carbon zeal that they’ve forgotten about the skin of the planet we’re ostensibly trying to save.
See http://www.jmt.org/faq-wind-power.asp
Wind turbines can now be seen from 60% of Scottish locations. How long will it take for America to be so festooned? I find that prospect very troubling, but many electrical engineers and fake environmentalists are fine with it. Did those people ever get souls?
http://scotlandagainstspin.org/2014/09/wind-farms-visible-from-at-least-60-of-scotland-map/
Website that satirizes Scottish tourism by showing what the government has done to the landscape:
http://www.visitscotland-windfarms.com/
Wind turbines ARE eyesores and noise IS a problem, so there’s no need to lie about that. Arguments about their inefficiency are still mostly true, despite the lame spin that this article attempts. They ARE intermittent and often seen not turning. Why use platitudes to pretend it’s not an issue? Some people tolerate the blight better when they at least see them turning (Paul Gipe has written about that).
Global warming is one of the biggest man-made ills but not the only one. It’s mainly a problem because man-made infrastructure and farming is under threat. Before we caused this heatwave, nature rode out other warm periods and species migrated, etc. That’s not AGW denial, it’s just a way of seeing that we’re really trying to protect US, not nature. Wind turbines are very anthropocentric in that context. They send the message that nature’s appearance is expendable and the economy matters most. We’ve stripped mountaintops for coal and trashed oil-bearing zones for that same reason.
Wind turbines do similar damage under a “clean” banner but may blight far more visible acreage than anything we’ve ever built. Why would true environmentalists not care? Many in the Deep Ecology movement are not happy with wind power because they see the whole picture, not just the climate issue. I think wind pushers are single-issue technocrats, not environmentalists.
The old saying “death by a thousand cuts” is exactly what’s happening as wind turbines sneak into more and more landscapes, with developers hoping the public will start believing they’re part of nature. Sorry, many of us will never get used to them, and we aren’t just global warming deniers.
“New polling numbers from Britain’s YouGov has found that 71% of Scottish adults are in favor of the continued development of wind power as part of the country’s energy mix, a number that has increased from 64% two years prior.”
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/17/scottish-public-increasingly-favour-wind-power/