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The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms
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.'"
This isn't like one person standing at the end of a line, and shoving SO HARD that the person at the other end feels it... it's about co-operation: everyone takes one step forwards. You don't have to move mass quantities of ANYTHING over ANY long distance. Local distributors move small amounts, where needed.
This is a job for... COMPUTOR!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
In the 1950s the government set about a huge project to link America's cities and states via high speed road links. The investment has paid off well, and a similar project on our power infrastructure (especially if they could build a fibre network alongside) would pay off just as handsomely.
Why anyone wants Federal control of anything is beyond me. Think about it, the only thing that thundering herd of dumbass has done in the last 30 years that worked "as advertised" is the Do Not Call List! Put them in the power business and take more money from our pockets for them to waste? I don't think so.
Remember, if you make less than $169,000 a year, you have NO representation in Washington!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Yes, the grid needs to be changed to handle large power inputs from a more distributed system.
This would require federal tax credits as an incentive, as well as an open design.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What do you do in places that don't have sufficient wind for wind power?
The next time you drive by a nuclear plant take a look at the transmission infrastructure. You might see three different sets of pylons leaving each with a couple of 500kV circuits.
It takes wires to move electricty from generation to load, I don't know why they are surprised that when they build a wind farm in the middle of nowhere there transmission capacity to handle all that extra energy.
Especially since everybody says they have hardly built anything new in the way of transmission...of course there is no spare capacity!
My parents both work for the local power company and this is a well known problem among those in the industry. I've been screaming about it forever. 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. Huge wind farms in the Midwest will only benefit the Midwest. A massive solar array in the Mojave dessert will only benefit states that are near it. Step #1 in the transition to alternative energy has to be to modernize and upgrade the power grid so energy generated in one region of the country can easily be transported to another and this is going to have to be a top down operation overseen by a single federal regulatory body. Leaving it in the hands of the states isn't going to cut it as the states have differing standards and regulatory environments.
I'm generally a libertarian but this is one area where the federal government is going to have to get involved to get everybody on the same page. It's akin to the interstate highway system. Without the direct involvement and oversight of the federal government that never would have happened and this won't either.
If they aren't going to work together, build new systems that that will. It's that simple.
I realise there's the whole 'but shareholders will object' thing. Well fine, if the well off think they're in a position to survive global warming, then let them vote no.
Then the first company who gets its shareholders to understand that money doesn't provide immunity from extinction if the planet becomes hostile to our species through climate change will generate wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Why? Because any such company would be so far ahead of the competition as to be unreachable. At least for long enough to make everyone involved very rich indeed.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I just toured a nearby dam, and was presented some very insightful ideas.
Nuclear and coal power are great for handling base load because they provide consistent power.
But peak load is where the money is; turning on power systems when they're needed to match the load at that second. Solar, wind, and water are all peak-load power supplies because they are not always consistent, vary widely according to weather and time of year and regulations, and can be very unclean with spikes. This is why these power systems cannot replace base load systems yet.
The solution is to even out our peak load systems so that they are more consistent and more like base load systems. Whether that's tying many different types together and hoping they even out naturally, or storing the energy in some kind of battery in the middle.
Since battery technology is nowhere near ready, a viable option is to store water in reservoirs behind dams, using wind and solar energy to pump water up, then releasing it evenly through a generator. This is even being employed in some countries.
Actually, the problem is not the same. Building a new factory needs new lines, sure, but the lines only have to go to a power plant (or rather to the last substation or whatever). This can be measured in 10s to 100s of miles. Not really that large scale, and there isn't a huge concern for power losses over this distance.
When building massive wind farms, the idea is that they're going to be built in areas without a large population center (say South Dakota). The power then needs to be delivered not 10s of miles, but rather 100s to 1000s of miles (the big demand for power is in the northeast and the west coast). This will require building huge lines that need to have low losses. This will likely mean building DC lines, and the cost of such infrastructure is huge compared to the cost of building lines 10s of miles. This means that despite the fact that wind power generation is currently less efficient (on a cost basis) than coal, the true cost will likely end up being even more. If the wind power is generated 1000 miles away, the real cost of the power has to factor in the cost of building the power plants (which still cannot be part of the base power load), the cost of building transmission lines, and the cost of the significant power losses that will occur when transferring the power 100s or thousands of miles.
Phil
If we imagine the combination of say, superconducting continent-wide backbones and smart, distributed-control, adaptive, switching,
then as long as the wind is blowing, waves are rolling, or sun is shining somewhere in some parts of your continent, then you have a pretty stable power source (delivering some portion of the total combined rated capacity of all those widespread generators.)
The old saw that these alternative, renewables are whimsical, unreliable sources is purely a myth, predicated on a brain-dead dumb grid.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You can't put a nuclear plant next to each village
You can put one near every major city and that'll work just fine. Just have to make them medium sized and standardize on a design or two.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
TFA is mostly talking about there not being, for instance, a sufficient link across state boundaries - I don't think that the wind power company having to build new lines from the state in the middle of the country (where the wind is) it's generating power in to the coast of the US (where the people are) to be able to do buisiness is on the same scale as tying a plant to the grid next to it.
It's saying that "the grid" can't carry the power long-haul from sparsely populated places where there's easily collected power to densely-populated areas where there isn't, not that the local line from the wind farm is too small/too expensive.
The feds don't need authority. They already have it. Congress just hasn't assigned it to any agency yet. If you think an electrical grid that shares power generated by utilities in numerous states isn't covered by the commerce clause, you are not reading the same Constitution as the rest of us.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Federal power grid = feds have the power to give a non-compliant region "power failure."
Keep it to the states, folks. Read your tenth amendment and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Oh boy! I just had an images of another few volumes added to our already byzantine tax code; for which there will be some loopholes put in by lobbyists that will allow some big corp to get some easy money. And then when or if wind or solar or whatever becomes the dominant power source, the tax incentives will still be there to further distort the economics of said power source and god forbid if anyone suggests that the tax incentives should be removed.
But hey, Washington is all about compromise.
As oil an gas gets more and more expensive, there won't be any need for tax incentives - the markets will take care of it. Maybe not as fast or as efficient as some would like it, but it sure beats a legislative solution any day.
Like that's ever stopped them before? We have a welfare system, federal highway system, healthcare for underemployed people, and federal guidelines for public schools, none of which is constitutional. Do you honestly think they won't nose into state business again?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
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.
Crumple up that tinfoil hat, because the answer is fairly obvious: cheap solar cells are being bought up by the power industry because... wait for it... they want to use it to produce electricity.
Cheap PV isn't going to come to the consumer level (you and I) until the industrial (solar power plants) and commercial sectors (construction & other volume buyers) get their fill. You have to remember that consumers are one time buyers. We're going to install it in/on/near our property and that's it for the next 10~25 years. Everyone else gets precedence over us.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Or, at your massive wind farm you could put a couple of Hydrogen generators, and anything that can't go into the grid can be used to make that Hydrogen from water that all the Hydrogen fuel cell car people are saying "Where's that going to come from"
Just a thought.
You are already paying for it. It just shifts who gets the cash and who gets to own the means of production. If you are more than happy to have a perpetual open ended contract where you have no idea what you will be charged in the future for the product delivered...well...doesn't that just sound dumb? In essence, signing up for grid supplied power as your only source is just that. You're going to be paying that bill the rest of your life anyway (assuming like most people you will probably want electricity forever), so the question then changes to something more directly to the point now that this money issue is resolved, do you want to buy something you can eventually pay off and own and enjoy (solar PV does this in most cases, it can be as little as 7 years on up to 20 years at today's prices, but it does get paid off at some time), or just perpetually rent forever with no fixed price to look at? Do you want to build your own equity, or just keep building your electric landlord's equity? That money is leaving your wallet no matter what.
As to the issue of windpower and the grid, again, a much larger shift to smaller and more decentralized means of production means we won't have to rebuild the entire grid infrastructure so much. A *lot* of folks who have already gone full alternative energy run both types of systems now, because in the winter months the winds usually pickup as solar gain drops, vice versa in summer. Not everywhere, but it is exceedingly common now in those circles.
I look at this energy issue the same way as I do my big garden and this "eating" thing that seems to be as popular as using electricity. Ya, I could work more, make more money, then drive to the store and buy expensive organic stuff...or..just produce it onsite, eliminate several expensive middleman steps and use a lot less energy into the bargain, and not contribute so much to excess carbon emissions and so on.
When I look how much I get out of that garden (and my other stuff, dinner tonight home produced burgers with my own tomatoes and other stuff in a salad, topped off with my own watermelon for dessert) compared to hours worked and production costs involved, it is a rather well paying "job" to just do it myself. Tradeoffs, everyone gets to pick what they want to pay for and everyone gets a choice to pick if you want to own "it", "it" meaning any number of life's necessities or things you *really* want like back to the electricity, or help someone else own it and they might turn some over to you for a price to be constantly adjusted probably not much in your favor forever.
And that's it, along with economies of scale. Computers never got cheap until it went from thousands of home PCs to millions, then the market exploded and now look at it. Same deal will happen with alternative energy, and even though the earlier adopters pay more, they still get the benefits immediately, and it just keeps getting better from that point on.
choices-it's nice to have them
no choice and vendor lockin-not so nice
You're both right. Corruption is common in government AND private projects. The problem isn't the people corrupting, that's inevitable. The problem is that we don't have a good system of accountability set up to put all this corruption in the public eye.
When the supply of wind power collapses send a message through a network to appliances which can be switched off for a few minutes without causing too many problems.
Heaters could work this way. They could pay a lower charge for energy in return for participating in load balancing.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The salts have a high melting point (but not so high as to cause problems for other materials involved) and decent heats of fusion.
It lets you design your plant around a constant T_hot. Although your peak efficiency is lower than the theoretical maximum, you can run at the design efficiency for much longer. In short, the salts smooth out the heat spikes, and as a bonus, if you have some way of measuring the ratio of still-solid salts to molten salts, provide a way to determine just how long you can run before loss of efficiency.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Haven't we learned enough already? The Feds keep getting jurisdiction and the red tape gets worse. The Feds are FORBIDDEN by the Constitution from dealing in this, and most other matters. A short list of Federal agencies that are in violation of the Constitution:
Department of Education
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (would make a great convenience store)
DEA (except for drugs crossing state lines)
Department of Family and Children
Department of Labor
Actually, almost all of them that begin with "Department of" are a violation of the Constitution.
To clarify what I'm say. Here's what the Constitution says:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
That means that unless the Feds are specifically given a power in the Constitution, it doesn't have that power. Our trillions of dollars of dept are the result of the Feds sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong. Our erosion of Rights is a result of them poking around where they aren't wanted. How is this happening? You let it happen. You think that laws you like should apply equally in California and Kansas. Why? Pass your local laws and be happy. If they want to teach creationism in Kansas, so fucking what. Let them live in ignorance because it isn't any of your damn business!
Now when local governments are violating the Constitution (e.g. civil rights and voting), I want the Feds to come down hard on the local yokals. The Feds do have a legitimate purpose. Let's keep them focused on that.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Um, sorry to say this, but "so what?"
I mean, I like the desert as much as the next guy, but if i were to list the places that should be left pristine and untouched, the desert would be low on the list. it just isn't that nice to live in IMHO and there isn't a huge ecosystem there to destroy.
I'm not advocating that we all get ATV's and tear up the entire desert, but with roads and simple rules we can preserve what doesn't have to be trampled on.
I mean, if you're going to screw up SOMEPLACE with solar panels or wind farms, that's about the best place we could have hoped for.
Just my city folk opinion.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
My real estate agent drove over the corner of my soon-to-be lawn, which slightly annoyed me. The tire indentations lasted a couple of years - and I live in the Northwest, with plenty of rain and greenery. But I don't think it's fair to say there was damage in the environmental sense, any more than construction of a solar plant would necessarily "damage" the surrounding environment.
I don't mean to nitpick, as I understand your point (naturally, we'd have to be very careful, especially in sensitive areas like the desert), but I disagree with the notion that an ecosystem is "damaged" just because there are signs of human life / activity. No longer pristine, fine, but not necessarily damaged. I think we have the technology and desire in these times to create these sorts of power plants while still being good stewards of the environment.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Yes, there *is* a huge ecosystem there to destroy. It's just not rolling hills of green grass year-round. Those that do live here tend to like our surroundings.
Not that it changes much, because southern deserts are obviously the best place to put solar cells, and it should be reasonably simple to minimize ecological impact. But us desert dwellers are sick of ignorant fucks from outside saying "screw it, it's the desert." Our plants and critters are just as important as yours.
What is the difference between wind power generated "locally" and that generated in some other state? If you live in Kenosha and the wind power you use is generated near Eau Claire, that somehow makes it more yours than Minnesotans, who live closer? Or Illinoisers who live five miles away from you?
I bet you buy your bananas and oranges from that local Wisconsin farmer. And drive your car with local Wisconsin oil. And type your senseless blathering on a Wisconsin-built PC. Oh, right, we live in the modern world where people produce things in the place most suitable for production. Welcome to the 18th century.
No matter where you go there's a huge ecosystem to destroy. Maybe I live in a make believe world, but i believe that a lot more things would live in the shade provided by solar panels (assuming that they're mounted) than would have been there before the panels were installed.
I don't think anybody's really theorizing about crapping all over the desert other than what it takes to build the sites. From a NIMBY aspect, this seems pretty tame.
I don't value your plants and critters more or less than mine, but I do weigh value based upon quantity of life and the uniqueness of life. Those are the two things that I think need to be weighted when you talk about environmental damage. Actually, the third thing which must be weighted is "how long will it take the ecosystem to recover". That's probably the biggest place where the desert should get it's due.
The desert is an area that is a lot less in demand than many (most?) other areas of our planet and this is a lot less destructive than many of the things that have been done in the name of power generation.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
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.)
If it is built underground, you may increase energy density as well: use the water injected into the ground as hydraulic fluid to raise the covering terrain, thus the energy is stored as gravitational potential energy of elevated earth (well, this has to be NIMBY, as it regularly produces small earthquakes as it works).
If local terrain geology allows it (parallel water-impervious layers) you can make a sort of reverse artesian well, without much investment into construction works.
We have a horse and buggy electric grid, courtesy of the descendants of Standard Oil which supposedly made horses obsolete. Infrastructure needs to come first. Should have started 40 years ago.
US grid has extremely low capacity in high-voltage lines. Any decently run power company would never allow that. But that is long term investment (lines and transformers last 40+ years) and no-one wants to put money there, esp. for some exotic feature called "redundancy". Last black-out in NYC (2003) was due to lack of redundancy in high-voltage lines.
No sig today.
Where did I say dump the grid? I said add in a lot more solar so we won't have to massively upgrade the grid so much, because we can add to local production, directly for homes and businesses onsite, no grid required. And solar is more than just electricity, we have solar thermal as well, which could be used for a lot more hot water heating and space heating. The article is about the wind farms and not being able to use the power, my counter is a slightly larger emphasis on local production means we won't have to bump up the grid so much. Personally I would prefer an "all of the above" approach with energy, that and a much greater emphasis on dropping demand via better insulation in buildings and better and more efficient appliances and so on. All of the above, we are going to need all of it.
Solar as a stand alone source is very practical and thousands of people just in the US already use it, with battery banks. This isn't exotic or very rare anymore, man, this is 2008, the tech is solid and is out there working. When solar PV was first invented and used it cost thousands of dollars a watt, it is now down to full retail at some outlets under 4 bucks a watt, and getting better all the time.
Properly sized home battery banks can last for years, mine are ten years old this year and still work fine, despite any number of internet experts assuring me they might only last 2-3 years and need to be replaced. I heard the same thing when Priuses first came out, all sorts of internet experts claimed the batteries wouldn't last, but so far, very few people who own those cars have replaced them, many are well over one hundred thousand miles and still working.
As for leeching off the neighbors, well personally my panels weren't subsidized, regular plain full price retail. Hell, for the longest time home owners just in general terms were "leeching" off their usually poorer renting neighbors because they got a mortgage deduction and the renters didn't.
Governments offering incentives for this or that are common, it's beyond common, it is normal, it is exactly how this system works right now, the tax code is slap full of deductions or other ways to lower your taxes for this or that, so really, where's the beef? Local property taxes going to public schools, even single people and elderly with kids long gone out of the schools still pay that, because we the people folks decided it was a good idea for the commons. Corporate deductions for big business dudes to sit in a fancy and expensive restaurants and eat, and to travel around and show each other power points??? To own and operate private jets?? What the hell... Solar PV credits right now are such small potatoes compared to other forms of what could be called "tax payer leeching" it ain't funny.
And most other forms of energy delivery have been subsidized. The grid, just in general terms,centralized delivery, that whole idea, all those transmission lines are just put there, they cross private property all over, no one gets a rental check for that, the government mandates access. That's a huge subsidy that's an artificial subsidy worth who knows how many billions going to benefit private companies, but they deemed it a good enough way to benefit the "commons". Same with natural gas delivery and so on, or how about municipal water supply? The public roads? How far do you want to go with this?
Development of most forms of energy people get delivered have all benefited from tax monies or special grants like granted access, look at nuclear, untold huge big number billions in tax money went into developing it, and even today not a single plant out there has their own full private insurance, they all make use of the government-tax money-as the ultimate last insurer. If they had to pay full private rates, that would sure bump up that price to the end user.
We have a DOE, they do continual research work on all forms of energy, you name it, coal to hydro to e