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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.
The summary is a crock and doesn't match the quoted article.
Transporting large and variable amounts of generated power is the dual of feeding large and varying loads. The power grid can handle it just fine.
The problem TFA alludes to is that, while cities and industrial plants already have fat lines to them from the rest of the grid, windfarms are new construction generally sited in rural areas that don't already have a "fat pipe" available. So (for a wind farm bigger than about twice the local load) you have to run some new lines.
Just like you would if you built a new auto plant or aluminum smelter in the same location.
It's a regular line, just like the ones feeding loads. It just happens to be running the power the other way.
Of course some people would love to get the government to pay for the line to their new wind farm, rather than bearing that expense as part of the project. And some people in government would love to have more authority and a bigger budget. So we get FUD like this.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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
One of the advantages of most ways to produce clean energy is exactly that it is easier to distribute the power generation over different locations. You can't put a nuclear plant next to each village, but you can put a combination of windmills, geo-thermal, solar panels, and waste incinerators (with their heat used for both electricity generation and heating industrial or other buildings, rather than just for heating rivers) in or in the neighbourhood of places where the electricity is actually needed.
This both lowers the stress imposed on large scale heavy duty power distribution nets, and reduces single points of failure and associated cascade effects. Of course, when you build massive wind/solar/... farms in certain places, you're going to need massive distribution capacity there just like in case you'd build any other large scale power plant.
Donate free food here
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.
This has been the case for years and isn't an inherent problems with wind farms. Many areas (California, Connecticut) are full of NIMBY people and large amounts of power must be imported. Quebec and New Brunswick Canada, have been exporting to us for a long time. One of the biggest problems is that some generation companies are also in the transmission business.
If area A has a surplus but area B needs power, and the lines cannot handle the transmission, then the price for electricity in B goes up. This is a complex case of supply and demand. The grid is a lot more fragile than it appears. In many places there is a desperate need for more generation/transmission, but the anti-infrastructure people are driving up the cost of electricity by not allowing infrastructure improvements to be made.
I worked at one plant that had to erect a huge sound wall around the entire plant. It worked great, but cost around $2 million including all the sound studies etc. The people next door claimed they never knew when the plant was operating (clear exhaust). We CAN build large power plants in your backyard, and you won't even know they are there- aside from the plant staff spending it up in local businesses.
Why yes, I do work in the power industry.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I wonder if the whole north-east grid will fall like it did 2003 each time a cold front move through the region... The big blackout even showed that the conditions to create a cascade of overloads shutting down the whole grid are possible. Could the power surge caused by all wind turbine getting into action simultaneously create similar power pulses through the grid, jumping the safeties like it did in 2003?
They already did. It's called "railroads". James Hill (Great Northern) even proved you could build a transcontinental railroad WITHOUT government help, without the huge corruption government funded projects on that scale inevitably create.
Where the hell did you learn HTML?
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?
This really blows.
(Apologies to all who are sick to their stomachs right now.)
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
not true.
He needed land grants and money from JP Morgan.
He purchased much of the railroad from failing companies.
There was huge corruption and wall street issues from the trust. Something that required government intervention to break up.
The practically destroyed wall street.
He was able to stay in business by giving an unfair advantage to his other business using the rail road during hard times. Basically shifting money on paper.
He did build 1700 miles of track, but at nearly slave labor rates.
The US government has done many very large and complex projects without corruption.
Nobody in the US has enough money to fix the grid.
The grid must be fixed for us to move into a new distributed system.
It's a perfect job for the government. Not to private contractors. That is where you get corruption, and failed projects.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Offer cheap power to anyone who moves near the wind power farms.
If electric power can't come to the people, move people to the electric power.
"Right on! People to the Power, man!"
For 99% of situations, I absolutely agree with you. However, the feds regulate the Northwestern power grid and a large portion of the generation capacity (the dams).
The federally operated Bonneville Power Administration has done an excellent job for the past 80 years, using zero tax dollars. Their wholesale rates are dirt cheap (~$0.04 per KwH) and the grid reliability has always been top notch. We should extend their reach across the entire grid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Power_Administration
Because the battery fairy doesn't drop off batteries for free.
There is one form of large-scale energy storage in wide use; pumped-storage hydroelectricity. Essentially, this involves pumping water from low to high places when there's surplus power, and running it back through a hydro turbine when there's a shortage. To make this work, you need the right geography, and there's only so many places with the right geography.
Conventional batteries cost a fortune to store energy. Get the price on some deep-cycle lead-acid batteries off the internet and do the sums yourself.
There is a lot of research going on at the moment into better ways to store energy. Aside from better battery chemistries, and the long-standing dream of the "hydrogen economy", the more realistic proposals involve storing energy as heat or mechanical energy. For instance, using wind power to compress air, which can be stored in a network of pipes connecting the wind farm, or, if you're lucky, a salt mine or some other sealed underground spot. The compressed air can then be used to run a gas turbine (much of the energy released in a gas turbine is used to compress the air for combustion anyway). Alternatively, for solar thermal power, you can just run the hot pipes through something convenient (molten salt is a popular one), and then when the sun goes down you connect the pipes to the steam turbine through the heat storage rather than through the solar field.
Your idea is sound in principle. Making it work is hard.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What do you do in places that don't have sufficient wind for wind power?
Those who do pump water uphill; those who don't, take what they need from said body of water.
Hydroelectric isn't the flavour de jour, but is notable for having the opposite qualities from those of windpower, in that it is able to manage variable demand extremely well, and absorb surpluses on the grid.
Wikileaks, no DNS
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.
This is crucial to the wind energy advocates (and all other electrical energy source advocates) as a consequence of the following facts:
1) The main goal of public policy reform of wind energy advocates is to put into place transmission lines to carry electricity from the high wind potential areas (such as the Midwest) to the high utilization areas (such as the coasts).
2) The main obstacle to constructing said transmission lines is the delays suffered by projects subjected to environmental impact litigation following from attempts to obtain rights of way.
3) The main motive for said environmental impact litigation is a misguided environmental movement's tendency to see any increase of capacity in the nation's energy capacity as harmful to the environment. This cannot be addressed directly in legislation (as has already been attempted, btw) due to the fact that the environmentalist tactic is to use legal tricks to get the courts to delay implementation of systems until the time value of those systems has run out.
4) The electrification of railroads is a proven technology -- indeed the largest railroad line in the world, the Trans-Siberian, is electrified.
5) The "conservation only" environmentalists will not oppose going to electrified railroads since they already see decreasing the energy use of railways and increase of railroad utilization -- which would result from railroad electrification -- as a way of reducing the nation's energy utilization.
6) The railroads already have rights of way that approximate the topology and coverage of transmission lines required to distribute wind electricity from sources to destinations.
7) The use of cryogenic transmission lines buried under the tracks would render the transmission capacity of virtually all existing railroad rights of way enormously greater than the possible use by the railways.
Seastead this.
Another thing that occurred to me is that this entire article and all it represents are merely a ploy on the part of Big Oil to put the idea of wind power in a bad light. [emph. added]
Only 1.1% of US electricity is from oil, and that is as a stopgap when a coal train is delayed etc., and the rare use of petroleum coke.
Why do people think we burn oil for electricity? The research is very easy to do:
eia.doe.gov
I've got it memorized just for these occasions. EIA dot DOE dot GOV
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
Electricity comes from coal, nuclear, and natural gas in that order.
I guess it's just easier to make up a conspiracy theory that fits political prejudice than do any actual research or thought.
As of 2000, stored power to the tune of about 2.5% of the US load (19.5 gigawatts) was online in the form of Pumped Storage. The EU had 32 gigawatts.
There's plenty of room to do more of that out in the desert; 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.) All pumped storage requires are wires, pumps, generators, a couple of big storage systems (one uphill, one down), and water. Doesn't have to be fresh water, either. The larger the height difference, the more energy can be stored. It's lossy; but still, it is both clean and effective.
Companies like EEStor that are working to create ultracapacitors with storage capacities exceeding those of batteries may be key to storage; storage can be local, on a per-unit basis which insulates users from the myriad types of grid failures that occur. It also allows them to store power locally if they generate any themselves (solar, etc.) Ultracaps are good for moderate term storage without much loss, and they can be fused in such a way as to prevent huge power discharges in case of accidents, so they're pretty safe.
There are some other contenders - flywheels, for instance -- but do *you* want an aging flywheel, high mass, high speed, coming apart in your basement? Me either. I saw a 4-inch grinder wheel come apart once and chunks of it outright severed a 2x4 in the wall next to the workbench. So those are probably best left in large scale storage farms.
Aside from storage, the thing that has always amazed me is that solar never seems to become really affordable. No matter how many ways they make it, or what tech they use, somehow, I can't buy inexpensive panels that will cope with hot summers, cold winters, and rain. 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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I really believe that microgrids - peer-to-peer electricity grids wherein many small-scale power sources are used where optimal - are the answer to this. The big conventional grids lose a lot of electricity to resistance, and have to overproduce to get any redundancy at all. We need to revamp our infrastructure anyway, so why not?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4245584.stm
http://certs.lbl.gov/certs-der-micro.html
http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/articles.aspx?Index=329
http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/fuel_cell_markets/news_and_information/3,1,1,1,14428.html
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.
I propose that FishWithAHammer pays it all.
- Raynet --> .
Given the fact that the NIMBY factor for power lines,power plants, nuke power, roads, dams, whatever is so high, the odds of at least one person objecting is virtually 100%.
Therefore, if you would like to have nuke power, power lines, roads, high speed rail, whatever, you will *need* to force somebody to fucking move for the greater good. Otherwise, you will never get the right-of-way to make your project happen. We have granted our government the ability to force people to fucking move out of the way.
We call this Eminent Domain.
Why anyone wants Federal control of anything is beyond me
Given that large scale projects are impossible without forcing somebody to move, do you feel comfortable granting eminent domain to private industry?
If you say "make it all states rights" given that many of these large scale projects affect multiple states, you'll wind up with heavy federal oversight anyway. Let states do it all, and they'll sue eachother when the other guy builds a huge damn. They'll sue when their state law conflicts with the other state law. You either get federal agencies for interstate projects, or you get a metric assload of federal judicial "weight".
Grid: I want the wind power!
Windfarm: YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE WIND POWER!
Taxes?
2^5
Storage? Springs. Lots of them. A massive booby trap farm that releases at night.
To do list for Windows
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.
I propose that FishWithAHammer pays it all.
The motion is seconded. Please address all invoices to Mr. F. WithAHammer.
The popular conception of wind power is fast-paced windmills cutting birds in half as they twirl through the air whenever the wind happens to blow. I was just in Germany and saw many windmills turning so slowly through the air that if a bird hit one, it was either not paying attention or drunk. I've seen the same thing on the hills of Crete overlooking Heraklion. One point is that you needn't have hurricane force winds to make wind power effective. All you need is an area of 'prevailing winds' that are more or less predictable--just like the trade winds that predictably blew sailing ships across the oceans for centuries. There are many areas like this all across the USA. For example, the Dalles area on the Columbia River, well known for its prevailing winds. Here's a wind map for Oregon, for example: http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/maps_template.asp?stateab=or
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Really? I thought most modern coal plants crushed the coal into a powder and used it to fire a turbine, much the same as you would with Natural Gas.
No. Coal plants do powder the coal to form a fluid fuel/air mixture, but they use it to fire a furnace which heats a boiler: the steam is used to turn a turbine. It takes time to start one up because you have to bring the water to a boil.
Natural gas turbines burn the fuel directly in a turbine. I'm not sure, but I suspect the reason you can't do this with coal is that the fuel powder particles will raise hell with the moving parts of the turbine.
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
The UK paper is the only one that is "The Times", since it is the original.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"Protected". I don't think that word is appropriate. "Stolen". There I fixed it for you.
What part of Global Military Adventurism in support of Corporate Profits can be construed as the sworn mission: Defending the Nation and it's Constitution?
America is like a giant, sucking leech. With guns.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Store the power in Energon Cubes. Then let me know where you put those >;-)
Thanks,
Megatron
The truth is, we live in a world that needs oil. And that oil has to be protected by men with guns.
Oh I see. So women with guns can't protect oil.
One thing that is done with excess power here in the US is pump
water to a high resevoir, and it can later be run thru the
turbines to generate hydro power as needed.
It is done during the fall/winter/spring at night at Hoover dam.
Lower demand due to less Air Conditioning usage.
The power from the Windmills could pump water to water tanks
on tall hills or even mountains.
The extra pressure could be used for power generation, and then
down pressured sent on to homes.
Here in the US in the mountains some ppl due that for Micro Hydro.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
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
This is the crap that G.W. Bush has been pushing... to "share" our electricity rates equally. Well, I have this to say about that: "NO!!!"
My electricity rates are probably lower than most. But that's because "cheap hydroelectric power" has dammed OUR local rivers, ruining some of OUR recreational opportunities, covering up OUR land, and killing off OUR local salmon and sturgeon and trout and waterfowl...
You east-coasters... go damage your own environment further if you want electricity at the same rates. The fact is, we pay for our power in other ways. "Sharing" equally is not equal. Nor is it equitable.
There is plenty of windpower here, too. But windpower is not cost-free either. There are environmental and other costs, including opportunity costs, that must be paid.
We do not want to pay your rates AND with our environment too. Look elsewhere for a free ride.
Yeah Solar sucks, look at how little power hits the Earth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun
I mean if you were to build a CSP Solar reflector system in the
3.5 million square miles of the Sahara Desert it would barely
power a few Earths, how lame is that.
SEGs gets about 350 Mega Watts out of 2.5 Sq. Miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems
Boooooo Solar..... .......
Or not.....
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
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.
>Why anyone wants Federal control of anything is beyond me.
Yeah, the interstate highway system blows goats. So does the US military. We also need to get rid of all those national parks sucking up prime real estate. And the way the FDA wastes everyones time with all that "inspecting" of the "food supply" for "botulism". And who needs a stable monetary system anyway?
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
[sigh]
Yes, it is true that no alternative power source can quickly and immediately replace an infrastructure that took about a century to put in place.
It is also true that the amount of solar energy that falls on the US exceeds our total power consumption by many times, even accounting for the low efficiency of PV and solar thermal collectors. Here's a snippet from wikipedia (where it references a page from Stanford -- you can chase the links yourselves): "The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined."
It is also true that the available wind power amounts to many times the total amount of energy consumed by the US (you can look it up yourself -- it's also a ginormous number).
Finally, Google's recent investment into Enhanced Geothermal Systems highlights the potential to pull energy from the latent heat within drilling range, using more economical technologies than have previously been utilized. There is a 2006 MIT pdf on Enhanced Geothermal Systems which shows that there also, we find available reclaimable energy capable of satisfying our total energy needs many times over.
If wind power is inconstant, over-build, and generate far more power than we need on average, and use the excess to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen to drive fuel cells during the calm periods. The odds of having a lengthy calm period that extends over much of the US is practically nil. Same thing for solar power -- build out more than you need, and use the surplus to split water (which covers 3/4 of the planet) into hydrogen and oxygen. If a nation the size of Germany with limited resources (compared to the US) can commit to 100% alternative energy, there's no reason why the US cannot do so as well, with our much larger supplies of available energy and much larger economic resources.
But with such a variety of available and abundant energy sources, we don't need to overbuild, the point is to utilize each of them where they can provide the most impact (e.g., solar for peak utilization, which occurs during the day), and build an enhanced distribution grid (again, we're going to need to anyhow) to move electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed, just like we do today.
Wind power generates voltage spikes? So use flywheel technologies (e.g., Beacon Power (BCON)) to spin flywheels, and generate clean, regulated power from the flywheels. This is technology that exists today. It will even serve as a store of energy, to level out brief lulls in the output. New technologies require (and always receive) improvements as we learn how to best utilize them. Our experience with them improves them.
The point is, we CAN replace ALL our existing fossil fuel power generation infrastructure -- we have to anyway, due to obsolescence and planned upgrades -- we just can't do it quickly. It took us about a century to build what we have, we won't be replacing it in only a decade.
But we can gain a decade or so by making it an active conversion, by purposefully moving to alternative power, instead of waiting until it is enough cheaper than coal to make it the selection of choice. According to some sources, wind is already price-competitive with coal, and there is a lot of improvement left in the technologies to extract energy from wind. Not so much from coal.
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
Things that the Federal government does well.
1 The National Weather Service.
2. The US Coast Guard.
3. The FAA. Yes for all it's faults the FAA does really well. I am not talking just about the Air Traffic control system which works a lot better than most people think but things like nav aids and regulation.
4 The CDC.
And I am sure a lot more that I can not think off the top of my head.
Should they take over managing the Grid? I don't know but blanket statements like the one you made are just not helpful.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Electric Thermal Storage exists: http://www.adamsec.coop/Default.aspx?tabid=107
however, to do it requires about a 10k initial investment or so. large tanks of water have other problems, you'd need one big tank (or one big temperature differential) to heat or cool most homes, never mind the need for a hydronic heating and cooling system, which suits me just fine as a hydronic heating designer, but realistically only a small fraction of homes in our country have hydronic heating or cooling systems, which are also more expensive than the far, far more common forced air systems here in the US.
so for your 'typical' home, you'd be looking at more like a 15-20k initial investment. more if you need a condenser for cooling as well or if you want a really GOOD heating system.
not a bad idea, just not simple to implement for most people.
Here's a useful briefing paper on dealing with intermittency in wind power. It's a UK document, and has some hard numbers about wind plants in Europe.
When wind power is covering less than 10% of the load, the UK study says no special arrangements are necessary to provide extra capacity to cover periods of low wind. I've seen 15% mentioned in US discussions. There's enough excess dispatchable generating capacity ("dispatchable" means you get output when you ask for it) to provide backup power for 10-15% wind. Above that, it becomes more of a problem.
I've seen some US studies which indicate that even if wind power is averaged across a 1000 mile area (most of the Midwest and Southwest US), about 5% of the time, the whole collection of wind farms is generating very little output. So just running transmission lines around won't solve the problem. You need extra dispatchable capacity.
That dispatchable capacity is usually natural gas, hydro, or pumped storage. Dispatchable capacity of this type is typically a source where the installed equipment is relatively cheap but the fuel is expensive. In practice, this means gas turbines. If you have dams around that collect water but don't have enough continuous flow to be full-time hydropower sources, they can be effective intermittent sources. The California Water Project uses some of its reservoirs that way; they generate power during peak periods, but not all the time, because that would drain the reservoir. Some California Water Project sites pump water uphill at night, when electricity is cheap, and profitably run it back down during peak periods in the daytime. Pure pumped storage plants are rare; the US has two.
Solar, of course, is not dispatchable. Nuclear plants are normally run full time, since they're mostly capital cost; the fuel cost is small.
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.
"Solar panels on every building in America? How do you propose to pay for it?"
That's for the Americans to work out. Meanwhile Germany is pumping ~1GW of EXCESS power from rooftop solar panels back on to their grid. They estimate they have cut their CO2 emmissions by ~100 million tons. This change has increased the average German power bill by about one euro/month.
Continental scale infrastructure is a long term thing for humans, you can't notice it changing until you have lived the several decades it takes to see the change. Nobody is talking about covering every US roof with solar panels before next xmas, even with huge subsidies it would still take decades.
So what is wrong with upgrading/extending the grid as the need from rooftop PV arises? - I'm sure the current grid has seen quite a bit of upgrading since 1958 and I would be surprised if any power plants from the 50's are still operating today, IIRC most plants have a planned lifetime of 30-40yrs.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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...)
Have you considered the amount of energy required to move the hydrogen?
Electrolysis creates hydrogen GAS, which may have to be liquified (expensive), then moved (truck/pipeline).
Then consider the efficiency.
First off, you have the efficiency of the device generating electricity.
Then, loss before/during transport
Then, efficiency loss when running the fuel cell.
When you combine all those factors, is it still worth the investment?
(People forget that their pluggable electric car still charges off the grid, have you seem your local power plant?)
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
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.
Flywheels - That's the ticket!
And UltraCapacitors....
Both of those can take VERY high in-rush currents...
And then can output at what ever current you tell it to.
It's a similar solution to regenerative braking in Electric Vehicles: There is much more current coming off the "brakes" than a battery pack can handle. ie more than 100 AMPS! coming from the electric motor temporarily converted to an electric generator.
OK, here's some important things to note:
1: more wind does not mean more wind power. The generators are each computer comtrolled, and some wind turbines are spun up and down depending on the current damnd the grid can handle, in cooperation with other local power stations. We can DIRECTLY control how much wind energy we make and don't make.
2: equally, When wind falls back, most of the turbines are actually spinning with brakes having slowed the blades to slightly less than full spinning potential. The systems calibrate for light wind by releasing those restrictions, and the blades still spin at speed for multiple seconds, and even then, due the the weight of the blades, don't slow down very quickly... Local power companies have pleanty of time to spin up additional power.
Now, we do still need both wind and local power in a wind power environment. Some of the windo power can be used to push water uphill for on-demand hydro power later, but that's both expensive and limited in scope.
Also, wind power in the west, and across texas can't power all of america unless we add to the grid. They are correct, our current grid can't handle it, but anytime we're talking about adding power generation, we're also including in that the idea that we'll be expanding the grid as well. A superconducting line has been running on Long Island since April. The technology is proven, we somply need to deploy a few east-west and north-south lines, and some junction points, and we can distribute wind power across the whole nation.
Now, all that said, the braking systems, preventing over and under power, long distance transmission costs, and more, mean that we loose at least 15% efficiency on wind power generation. Why not let the turbines run full tilt all the time, producing direct current for electrolysis and make H2, which does NOT have to be grid balanced power. Instead of storing the H2, and trying to spend trillions building a new infrastructure for cars million dolar fule cells to run on it (read, you and I will NEVER drive one of these), we instead takle the H2 and run it to a local mixing plant and through an RFTS process using reclamated CO2, and we can make liquid fuels, on-site, and pipeline those fuels easily and safely using our existing infrastructure and keep driving our existing cars.
Doty Energy (www.dotyenergy.com) can do this TODAY. Costs for gasoline will be about $60/bbl, half what we're paying now. The CO2 we sequester from coal burning in current power plants will go to fuel the process in combination with H2 and some water. The byproducts are limted (and less than we get from making existing fuels). Eventually, new coal plants will also be capable of using liquid fuels in place of coal, so we'll be able to use WSindFuels to make power, then sequester it, recycle the CO2, and using free energy, make more fuel, in a process that will release 75% less CO2 total (since the car's won't be sequestering it's not completely CO2 free), release fewer byproducts, and allow us to continue using technology we already have, and to be free of foreign oil.
To run the whole country on WindFuels, including grid overhauls, pipeline upgrades, windfarms, and more, will cost about 40 trillion over 30-40 years. Fortunately, building this infrastructure is PROFITABLE, and since it can be deployed gradually, with much of the profit going back to system expansion, we should be able to get a great start on it with about 100 billion invested total.
It's also nice that ANYONE can built an RTFS plant, for about $50 million, and can make and sell fuels, lubricants, and just about any other hydrocarbon, directly to the open market. This means big oil won;t be able to control and corner the market, and fuel prices will remain in proportion to costs, not in proportion to demand.
If you want to know more, check out dotyenergy.com. The site is quire detailed already, but they're actually willing to share their reseaarch and numbers, and hope you'll find fault with the solution. A co
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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.