Tech Allows Stable Integration of Wind In the Power Grid 235
diegocgteleline.es writes "One of the most frequently raised arguments against renewable power sources is that they can only supply a low percentage of the total power because their unpredictability can destabilize the grid. Spain seems to have disproved this assertion. In the last three days, the wind power generation records with respect to the total demand were beaten twice (in special conditions: a very windy weekend, at night): 45% on November 5 and almost 54% last night (Google translation; Spanish original). There was no instability. These milestones were accomplished with the help of a control center that processes meteorologic data from the whole country and predicts, with high certainty, the wind and solar power that will be generated, allowing a stable integration of all the renewable power. You can see a graphic of the record here."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
In before the whiners (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing is ever a complete solution, for anything.
But every single Joule helps.
Does not change the basics. (Score:1, Insightful)
Whatever happened once in Spain does not change the basic facts.
Sometimes the wind does not blow at all, so you need to keep 100% generating capacity that can be brought on line within 20 minutes.
Now your basic coal plant tends to be large and slow (takes many hours) to warm up. So you need a whopping amount of gas turbine generating plants,
which not only cost a lot but are going to be idle a good part of the time, just sitting around just in case the wind stops. And it will.
So you're going to pay up front for the generating capacity, then again paying for expensive and scarce oil and gas when the wind stops.
Not an attractive financial proposition.
Manzanas and Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
renewable power sources ... can only supply a low percentage of the total power because their unpredictability can destabilize the grid.
As much as I'd like to see more renewable energy, this counter-example probably doesn't help. Spain has a somewhat modern and well maintained power grid. In this year's "Infrastructure Report Card", The American Society of Civil Engineers rated the USA's power grid "D+". (Unfortunately their website is down; here's google's cache [74.125.155.132]. Talk about failing infrastructure...)
Re:Good, but by no means a complete solution (Score:1, Insightful)
So that's why we don't depend just on wind. We also include solar, hydro, tidal and nuclear, with natural gas and oil only used as a backup for those.
Re:Stupid technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you add in coal and oil subsidies and the negative externalities of their use, they are no longer quite so cheap.
Re:Good, but by no means a complete solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Well. Just look at the graph linked in the article.
https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html [demanda.ree.es]
Note that the bottom drops below the zero line every now and then. Just before and after that the net hydroelectric power output drops to zero. I figure that's pumped-storage hydroectric plants filling their storage. Spain has at least 3 gigawatt worth of such plants. It doesn't solve the entire problem at this time, but it will sure help raise your baseline-example of 20GW quite a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity [wikipedia.org]
Re:Stupid technology (Score:1, Insightful)
Consider this. Harnessing renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper as technology matures. With coal, you have to pay for the fuel. With renewables, you do not.
Any questions?
Re:Does not change the basics. (Score:5, Insightful)
One trend I've seen in recent studies is toward distributed, decentralised power generation. We're not talking about one technology taking over, but rather a larger number of smaller generators in a variety of formats coming together to augment the primary generators we have. This is already happening to some degree, and expectations are that it will grow.
And why do you think this is happening? Would it be that smaller generators are somehow more efficient than large, high-capacity generating plants? Or do you think that it has been impossible to get a permit to build a large high-capacity generating plant for the last 30 years or so?
We can build all the smaller natural gas "peaker" plants we want, but it will not solve the problem of electric power demand exceeding existing generating capacity. We are rapidly approaching that point. Solar isn't going to help much, even if we paved all of Arizona, Nevada and Southeast California with silicon.
The biggest problem is that if someone got a permit and started building a 4,000 MW coal plant today, it wouldn't be finished for five years. A nuclear plant is more likely to take ten years to go online. So we better hope our base generating capacity - the kind we really need at 6:00 PM when folks have their air conditioners turned on and turn on the electric range to heat up dinner - will meet the need for the next five years until that plant gets online. Only problem is, there are no plants being built right now - maybe we will start soon, but so far nothing.
So we better hope there is a lot of excess capacity in the system so everything can keep growing, like the economy and jobs. Oh wait, there isn't much (if any) excess capacity today. I wonder what will happen?
Re:Stupid technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stupid technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this comment points reveals a consistent flaw with Slashdot - the score from mod points stops at five. :/
Re:There are two sides in that coin... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooner or later everyone on earth is going to have to bite that same bullet. Unfortunately, virtually every society in the world has chosen to squander their energy resources on building convenient, cheaper, but generally and often highly energy inefficient infrastructure. Reconfiguring everything now that it is built is going to be difficult, expensive, and a kludge to boot. That's what we collectively get for being morons who often don't think beyond the next quarter let alone several generations ahead.
Stupid Way of Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't believe that man-made global warming hasn't been adequately proven: so you're a greedy, goose stepping, capitalistic pig who doesn't care about the environment one bit.
or..
You believe that mankind should take responsibility for its actions on the environment: so pot smoking, brainless, mindless hippy that hates humanity.
Any people wonder why there's so much strife in today's world... Oh, and you can thank the media (sensationalism & controversy sales) and politicians (polarize to make them yours). Of which special interest groups are the bastard stepchild.
Re:There are two sides in that coin... (Score:4, Insightful)
How's that socialism working out for you?
About as well as capitalism is working out for us, apparently.
Re:Stupid technology (Score:3, Insightful)
Coal and oil are plentiful, cheap, and easy to use. Compare this to idiotic technologies like wind and solar that are hugely expensive, unreliable, and hurt the eyeline of the cities they are installed in. And people wonder why environmentalists are considered stupid.
Excuse me, but caring about our planet does not make somebody stupid.
Caring only about your pocketbook, however, does make you a greedy asshole.
And thinking that eveyone must have the same order of priorities as you does make you stupid.
Also, most wind turbines aren't built in or even near cities, they're usually off-shore or on hilltops somewhere out in the countryside.
There is one experimental wind turbine in Sydney, which I could see from my University. I used to love staring out the window at it, I found the slow steady movement to be relaxing.
Not everyone thinks they 'ruin' a view.
Re:Stupid technology (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So they've almost caught up to 100 years ago. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wireless charging devices are just now becoming a viable solution.
Tesla was working towards creating that 75 years ago.
We are a stupid species that creates worth from nothing and fears change.
Don't worry, there is someone in a basement coming up with the "NEXT" big idea that has potential to change the world, though, it will be burried.
Nobody wants free energy... how would they keep their stranglehold on society ?
We'll be burning fossil fuels for a long, long time.
Re:Clean Coal (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but those things don't need to be continually resupplied as coal plants do. The whole concept behind renewable energy sources is that extracting the energy can be done cleanly once you have the facilities in place. Well technically that's more of a pleasant side effect (we'll run out of coal long before we run out of sun), but regardless it kicks the crap out of coal.
Re:Just need to turn some stuff off (Score:2, Insightful)
Not this conservation crap again. Simple mathematics shows that conservation is not a "solution" to our energy crisis. It's not even close.
Population increases exponentially, and power demands must therefore increase exponentially as well. If we add in quality-of-life improvements, power demand will increase even faster than population growth.
Now, on the other hand, all conservation can do is shave a constant factor off our current per-capita energy costs. It won't do anything for the asymptotic increases.
Arguing that conservation can solve our power problems is like saying that a really fast bubble sort can solve our sorting problems. What improvements you might make get overwhelmed by large exponential factors.
how much energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Wind has a high Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) but it's not as high as many people think. Similar to nuclear. Sure: X kilos of U generate gobs of power, but building, maintaining, decommissioning, and dismantling the plant and its waste is very energy intensive.
RS
You are missing a whole subject (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a FALSE argument to claim alternatives can not work because they can't provide constant power.
There is a whole world of power storage solutions out there being completely ignored OR people are simply ignorant. It could be come an industry on some level or be a completely private industry where anybody with the tech could buy power and sell it back later for a profit.
We can leave the market to handle load balancing. Look at flywheel power storage, flow batteries, hydro power storage, or even fuel cells. These and new technologies will provide methods to balance the load and possibly help fund power storage technologies that will end up in other applications.
Its possible there will be smaller scale cheap solutions for use by block or by building. For example:
Heating/cooling is the largest thing we need and while it is not all electric (cooling is almost all electric) it does use a lot of power. We can store hot and cold cheaply and easily as well as insulate against wasting it. I'm not talking about cutting usage like that is another problem, its part of distributing load balancing the load AT THE SOURCE instead of just at the power company. Heat storage, cooling storage refilled when it can be. Sure, electric is a problem NOW but it might not be forever... and if it is, there is still a grid storage industry.
Re:Solar Wind (Score:3, Insightful)
Wind on the other hand is a result of a heat gradient between two locations on the planet's surface. Seeing as this force originates and terminates on the surface of the earth, there can be absolutely no net impulse given to the earth, let alone its rotational momentum.
Killing birds, disrupting the landscape, and even maintenance are all at least somewhat reasonable critiques of wind power. Claiming it will result in draining the Earth's rotational momentum is just ridiculous and totally incorrect.
Re:Stupid technology (Score:3, Insightful)
"Excuse me, but caring about our planet does not make somebody stupid."
"Caring about our planet" doesn't make you smart, either. And there's ample evidence from history to show that people who substitute zealotry for serious thought usually end up causing more harm than good.
"Caring only about your pocketbook, however, does make you a greedy asshole."
The original poster made some fairly specific points, all of which are arguably true. Sure, the "eyeline" thing is pretty subjective, but the fact that a certain prominent political family in Mass. has blocked local wind power for that same reason makes it hard to completely dismiss.
But you respond with an ad hominem argument: He's greedy! He doesn't care about the planet!
When solar and wind become profitable and efficient then everyone will use them. Until then they're luxury items.
Frankly we need more greedy people in the environmental movement. I want ultracapacitors to make someone as wealthy as Bill Gates. I want some anonymous engineer toiling at a startup company to invent artificial photosynthesis and never have to work again in his life. I want the Polywell fusion guys to make a breakthrough and be able to buy their own private islands.
When people get rich is when good things happen.
"And thinking that eveyone must have the same order of priorities as you does make you stupid"
Yeah, because berating folks as "greedy assholes" is always the best way of showing respect for other people's priorities.
But if you do want to hear another person's priorities, then I think the answer is blindingly obvious: nuclear power. Unfortuantely the nitwits who have infested the environmental movement can't seem to get past their superstitious fear of it. Or maybe they don't really want cheap, affordable and safe energy so much as different kind of power entirely.