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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."
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Disclaimer: I'm a Spanish citizen, living in Spain.
First of all, I want to remark the great work of the REE company ("Red Eléctrica Española" stands for "Spanish Electric Power Network", the monopoly for electric power distribution), they not only do a great work routing and adapting the production to the user energy demand, but also provide a lot of useful information about power consumption, production/consumption balance, etc.
The dark side of the problem is that although there is a huge amount of "green energy" being generated in Spain (wind and solar), that is, paradoxically, a problem. The problem is because current "green electricity production" is above 20% of total energy production, which sounds great, yes, the problem comes from nuclear power being dismantled from past 20 years, so the electric bill goes up because of the more expensive production (the solar energy production is specially expensive, which has been subsidized ad nauseam). Now the country faces near 19% unemployment rates (almost twice the U.S. figures), paying a huge price for energy, with the country in the middle of its worse recession since the post-war era (40's).
Coal and oil are plentiful, cheap, and easy to use.
Coal and oil are plentiful, but you know whats more plentiful? The solar radiation and wind, both are unlimited.
Coal and oil are cheap and easy to use because we have spent massive amount of money improving them over the last 100 years. Given enough research it is entirely possible that solar and wind will be as cheap as oil (coal would be tough to beat though). Solar power however will likely end up being easier to use, no fuel, no exhaust, and no moving parts.
... and hurt the eyeline of the cities they are installed in.
Ever heard of smog? I would much rather see a bunch of solar panels and windmills, than a giant brown haze of asthma attack and carcinogens.
And people wonder why environmentalists are considered stupid.
They are called stupid because what they are promoting is bad for business. Switching to these technologies is not efficient yet, but as this article proves they are getting closer. Big businesses and their propaganda machines (eg. Fox News) want to cast these technologies in negative light to avoid having to switch to them, which would cut into profit margins.
Oh and did I mention that these technologies could one day remove the USA's dependence on foreign oil, reduce medical problems, protect the environment, decentralize the electrical system, reduce power lost during transmission (local power generation), and be better suited to installation in 3rd world countries?
Or of course, we could just keep using the current system until our resources run out and then start looking for the solution.
My understanding is that the destabilization talk isn't about overloading a circuit breaker on one day, it's about massive fluxuation in available power over the entire generation time.
Just think of this. You've now made something like 80% of your grid powered by wind. (They all have problems, but let's just look at wind.) You have a doldrum for a day or two, now you've gone for that time period with only 20% of your normal power, that's destabilizing.
What if your windfarms are spead out over vast distances so they tend to have different local conditions. (Something like if you have them all over the USA.) In some ways that will help since no location is expected to be the same as the other, so there is an averaging effect going on. However, that averaging effect is limited by long distance power transmission issues. The grid isn't just a pull & dump system. It uses power to send power, and it needs to maintain what you could think of as electrical pressure, (V.W.A. formulas.) which is why you have all those transformers and sub-stations all over the place, they are one part of that system. So even in the distributed scenario, what if you get a situation like high-wind on the east coast, and calm conditions mid-continent, and dead west coast. Funny thing, the need for power didn't decrease anywhere, but only the east coast is generating enough for their area, some of the mid will be ok, others in brown-outs or black-outs, and the west coast would be mostly black-out conditions, except near the few remaining alternate power sources, assuming the grid demand didn't leach it out completely and blow the circuits. (The entire east coast USA was blacked out by a cascade grid failure, and it might happen again.)
Of course having multiple sources of power helps offset this kind of issue. For instance, solar. But that would only help during the hours of light, and again, it needs to be within a reasonable distance of it's market/users.
All this stuff is why intelligent power managers advocate a number of different generation schemes distributed over the area with clustering (when possible) near high draw locations (like big cities). And no power manager can rationally turn a blind eye to those methods that run 24 hours on demand.
I agree that we need to expand our renewable resources type power generation, as well as move away from fossil fuels, but it's a tricky balancing act with huge penalties for dropping the ball, so don't trivialize it.