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.'"

Comments

But Nukes are OK?

[Doc Ruby]

How come I never hear these complaints when people are insisting on huger, even more centralized nuke plants, or coal plants, or oil plants?

Maybe these limits are real. But in that case, the nuke boosters are lying when they tell us all we need are more nuke or coal plants, or just more oil drilling - because every centralized generation increase will bottleneck on the grid.