Gas Wants To Kill the Wind

RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."

Comments

LED Light Bulbs

[SloWave]

Just wait until LED light bulbs start hitting the fan. Watch the coal lobbiests and their pet politicians scramble then. I was recently allowed to try some 100W LED floodlights that were indistinguishable from the incandescent version, except no heat and a lot less power.

Re:if these jerkwads had any sense

[Ralph Spoilsport]

agreed. Especially considering that gas is a finite resource and we need to use is for MATERIALS not energy, as its value in fertiliser, plastics and other materials FAR outweighs its value as an energy source. We need gas to build the wind farms, and as many as possible as quickly as possible. (As well as solar thermal and other energy production systems). Because there will come a day, and it's not that far off, when fossil fuels will not be energetically profitable to mine, at which point we will leave them in the ground except to extract them as materials, not as energy.

This isn't a question of IF, it merely a matter of when and how, and IF the gas companies had half an ounce of sense in their heads, they'd be "Springfield Energy" not just "Springfield Gas".

RS

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[toastar]

The thing is Wind is Flaky, Personally I like to have power all the time, even when there is no wind.

There are two solutions to this problems:

1. Giant Batteries/ Flywheels/ Water storage hills
2. Gas Supplement.

The Reason you use gas is it's easier to turn on and off the Coal/Nuclear.

IMHO Nuclear>Gas+wind>coal

Granted this is a simplistic approach, But Gas is coming either way. There is going to be a ton of it on the market soon.

Standard Disclaimer: the company i work for would benefit by me making these statements.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[TubeSteak]

The problem is the high voltage transmission infrastructure that no one wants to build. FTFA:

Reaching a goal of 20 percent wind generation in 2024 would require construction of 10 inter-regional high-voltage lines spanning a total of nearly 22,700 miles, at a cost of $93 billion. Such an ambitious goal won't be achieved under a business-as-usual approach, the study concluded.

Not only will it cost an enormous amount of money, but it will have to cross State lines, meaning it will take multiple
regulators, multiple special interests, and multiples of everything else you can think of in order to become reality.

Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.
Not only do we require trillions in new infrastructure,
there are still trillions in repairs we've been putting off.