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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.
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
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.
LOL. The bar is higher than that, buddy!
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.
you do realize solar and wind power cannot really replace the base power loads of coal/nuclear plants (oil plants are rare now due to cost, and natural gas plants are generally run for supplemental power). Most plans so far have been looking into reducing the number of natural gas plants in use by using supplemental wind and solar plants. The real issue we will run into is the need to store power. Distributing it is great and helps allow us to rely on a larger percentage of "renewable" energy (as the odds that it's not sunny in places xyz, not windy in abc, etc starts to fall), but doesn't allow us to use the power 24/7. This is going to require an infrastructure capable of storing power for long time periods. The last thing we want is to have rolling blackouts on cloudy or windless days. It's not like you can just go "okay, for the next 3 hours this coal plant needs to produce more power", they just don't work that way (however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal).
Phil
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
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.
As an example, I know a bright, competent woman who has started putting a lot of time an thought into Boone Pickens's plan for a big move into green energy. I asked her what the plan was for storage and she said (referring specifically to home-based solar production of electricity), "That's no problem, excess electricity gets sold to the power company, who stores it for you." I tried to explain that Georgia Power has no facilities for storing your power and that in fact your minuscule amount of unreliable, intermittent electrical energy was more of a nuisance for them than anything else--until everybody tries to do it, when it turns into a big problem. This wasn't something she wanted to hear.
I would love to hear some good solutions to the engineering (and economic) problems posed by adding wind and solar to the grid, but so far there seems to be a lot of magic involved. For the uninitiated, a quick overview of the difficulties we face can be found here.
Taxes?
2^5
They could start storing energy thermally:
Give houses a large tank of water. In the winter heat the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the hot water to heat the house. In the summer cool the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the cold water to cool the house.
That would be a very environmentally friendly and almost 100% efficient way to store the energy. It would be much cheeper than batteries or any other storage method. And when you consider that 80% to 90% of domestic electricity is used for cooling or heating it would go a long way towards dealing with the problems of storing renewable energy.
Well,
It'd be cheaper than 5-years in Iraq, Yankee. And do a lot more towards keeping you secure.
But as a product of what America calls "education", you might find some dispute with that bright light of reason.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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!
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
You're assuming that we can harvest all that energy - solar panels and windmills all over everything. What will happen with the widescale use of geothermal heating? How much will the earth's temperature decrease? Let's slow down all the wind and cool the earth. That sounds like a great way to save the environment!
I don't understand why nuclear is automatically relegated to the back burner. It is the only source of power that doesn't ultimately rely on the sun, and if you're allowed to recycle the spent fuel rods it produces very little waste. France, which recycles, stores all of their waste in a single room. 80% of France's electricity is nuclear.
Also, the amount of radiation produced from a modern nuclear power plant is very, very small. You'll receive less radiation standing in the shadow of the plant than standing out in the sun. For comparison, living within 50 miles of a coal-fired plant will give you about 0.03 millirems of exposure a year, whereas being within 50 miles of a nuclear plant gives you 0.009. A smoke detector gives 0.008, and an airline flight gives about 1 per 1,000 miles flown.
Other than the risk of deliberate damage to a plant (e.g. terrorists), I don't understand why nuclear is so terrible.
Source: http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/content/resource_library/IPEC_EP/ComparisonRadiation.pdf
The government can't save you.
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?!
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.
Cut back on the military budget 5 - 10 percent, use the annual savings on putting solar-cells, wind-turbines, etc where appropriate.
The people who loose their jobs due to the military cutback can apply for jobs producing and installing solar-cells, wind-plants and in the logistics needed to handle them.
To start with, put the new plants as far away from the big power-plants as possible to achieve maximum power savings from lessening energy loss in the power grid.
After a few decades, you'll have most of your power produced locally, with a few big plants producing backup power and power for heavy industry like steel-plants and such, who'll probably not go off nuclear or coal until we have fusion power.
Problem is, something like that is close to impossible in a non-dictatorship.
There's a certain category of people who will scream and bitch about how they don't want a wind-plant where they can see it, or how it is unfair that city X got solar power when city Y didn't, or how they don't want their tax to pay for a power plant that someone else use, or a thousand other random complaints. =P
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
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.
Do you know who disagrees with you? Yes, that third branch of government whose job it is to make those determinations.
But then again, declaring laws unconstitutional is also unconstitutional, so I guess it doesn't matter what is or isn't since nobody can decide and nobody has any authority to act even if somebody had decided. (Go ahead, I challenge you to find a right to judicial review in the Constitution; it's plenty easy to verify, since the entirety of the description of the judiciary is about a page long. Their job is to interpret laws, nothing more. And let's not pretend that it was some grand magnanimous gesture or Constitutional amendment that brought this power into being; John Marshall simply wanted to fuck over Thomas Jefferson and he couldn't find a legal way of doing it without inventing one. We've kept it because it works.)
Alternately, we can agree that strict construction fails entirely too often and begin to dig down into the REAL issues, namely whether these things should or shouldn't be the province of federal government. Personally I think infrastructure is the sort of thing that federal government was made for. There are simply some things so vital to the national interest that you don't want them done piecemeal; things like defense and electricity and roads and even Internet, more and more these days, are among them.
To steal a quote from West Wing, "there are times when we're 50 states and there are times when we're one nation." Absolutely no good comes of having fifty potentially contradictory decisions about our power grid or many other issues, and much harm can come from it.
The founding fathers would probably be pissed off about a lot of the things that have happened. Many of them would probably go grab their guns and start shooting. I admire that. But you know what they would do after the dust settles? They'd come up with solutions. What's your solution to fixing the power grid? "ZOMG CONSTITUTION!" is a wonderful appeal to authority, and maybe it's even the right thing to do. It solves nothing. So solve it. Solve telephone networks. Solve gas and oil. Solve Internet access. Fix education. Solve power inequities involving labor. And do it with 50 different groups of people making their own decisions about them.