Tech Allows Stable Integration of Wind In the Power Grid

diegocgteleline.es writes "One of the most frequently raised arguments against renewable power sources is that they can only supply a low percentage of the total power because their unpredictability can destabilize the grid. Spain seems to have disproved this assertion. In the last three days, the wind power generation records with respect to the total demand were beaten twice (in special conditions: a very windy weekend, at night): 45% on November 5 and almost 54% last night (Google translation; Spanish original). There was no instability. These milestones were accomplished with the help of a control center that processes meteorologic data from the whole country and predicts, with high certainty, the wind and solar power that will be generated, allowing a stable integration of all the renewable power. You can see a graphic of the record here."

Comments

Re:Stupid technology

[mweather]

What mountains? The coal mine removed them.

One word:

[robinesque]

Flywheels.

Re:This will not be liked...

[Joce640k]

So ... that software I wrote for E-on to let design windfarms is a figment of my imagination?

And in other news,

[hyc]

this weekend large portions of Spain suffered extended blackouts as a number of the electric company's network routers were overwhelmed by an unexpected surge of traffic. This was apparently the result of an article about Spain's wind-based electrical program being published on slashdot.org, and the ensuing traffic overload from attempts to access the power generation graphs on the public site...