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In Oregon, Wind Power Surges Disrupting Grid
cpm99352 writes "The Oregonian reports gusts of wind cause synchronized power surges, more than the transmission lines can handle. Windmill farms are ordered to fan their blades, despite tremendous demand for 'green' power from California."
Why not use the energy during these peaks to pump water up to the top of a tower, then gradually release it as required. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
The problem is not wind power, it is an electricity grid in poor condition. Frankly, that is going to be a problem with or without wind power.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The problem is not in California, it is in Oregon. The demand is in California, but they cannot get the supply out of Oregon. It is not the case of the grid being in bad condition (though it is not in good condition), it is the case of the grid being built for fossil, nuclear, and hydroelectric power which turns on/off predictably and controllably, without major surges, now being used for wind power which surges unpredictably. Water is not a good analogy - surges in the water supply are on a matter of days or even weeks, whereas surges in the wind are a matter of. a second or so.
Because wind power varies, it has to be backed up by another power source which is turned down and up to fill in the gaps in the wind. But most power stations take at least a few seconds for the most agile (gas turbine) to many hours (nuclear) to turn on and off. If the wind varies too fast, this cannot be done and net grid power - the sum of wind and other - varies in a dangerous manner. The solution is for the wind power not to use the highest peaks, wasting the energy that California would like but preventing damage to the grid and equipment attached to it.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
There is a pretty large difference between the a power surge over a few seconds, and slowly, over the course of months, building up a supply of water in a reservoir. Dealing with a power surge over a few seconds is very hard. Dealing with a reservoir that builds up near to full is pretty freaking easy... just turn off some other power sources and slowly and predictably drain the reservoir. Unpredictability isn't the issue, rapid unpredictability is.
The problem of course is that the more you buffer something like wind energy, the less efficient (and thus more costly) it becomes. Dumping water into a reservoir will pretty much solve your energy surge problems, but it will make your output and cost crap. I bet the solution is probably more technological. Cleaning up a signal that fluctuates wildly is pretty old hat for signal folks, it just needs some scale up.
The problem is not in California, it is in Oregon. The demand is in California, but they cannot get the supply out of Oregon.
Sounds to me like a large part of the problem is that Californians are using more than they produce. That in itself is a problem, in fact is the heart of the problem. Californians need to produce more power locally, use less or find a balance of the two.
The same thing goes with California's other budget issue - fiscal-
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I don't agree. Doing everything in your own back garden is extremely inefficient. Things should be done where they can be done most efficiently - allowing for the cost of transport. You generate wind power where the wind is, solar power where the sun is, wave power where the waves are. Then transport it to where the users are
By your logic, California should only burn oil pumped in California. In fact, why allow a whole state to share - why not require SF to used only oil pumped in SF.
And certainly California should not import water in the way it does. Which would lead to most of Southern California being abandoned - it survives only on water imported from the north.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Wind power is inherently unreliable and completely unfeasible as a large-scale power-generation method. I found the following an interesting read:
Hugh Sharman, – Why Wind Power ‘Works’ in Denmark
http://www.incoteco.com/upload/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
The gist of it is that Denmark exports almost all of the wind energy they generate to neighbouring countries, because most of the time the power generated is in excess of the demand. Granted, that paper is several years old, but it still demonstrates the randomness of wind-based energy-generation pretty well.
Wind can never be used for base load energy generation without some kind of (expensive and impractical) energy-storing gimmicks, so instead of that how about just building a few comparatively cheap nuclear reactors and being set for decades? Perhaps at that point wind energy will be more feasible, but until then throwing money into implementing inferior energy-generation methods seems kind of silly.
I think there are limits to how much of a given resource one group of people should be importing.
There are too many people in SoCal to be able to provide them enough water. The problem isn't too little water, it's too many people. Some of them need to leave, and go where there is more water. People have been doing this for thousands of years. Our technology does not eliminate this process, only allows it to happen less often.
~Donald / Just RTFM
Your problem is that you are conflating the 'hydrogen economy' with energy storage. The problem with handling and storage is almost entirely negated by having it stored on site and not transported anywhere.
Any form of storage will have efficiency problems, and even if pumping water up hills is more efficient it won't be feasible if your having problems with transporting electricity in the first place.
Because you need a fragile motor/compressor for the process, and air tanks have to be re-tested yearly? Because storing air at 3,000 PSI ain't easy? It's actually a great idea; you'd eliminate the generator in the wind turbine itself, and replace it with an air compressor. Then the generator gets to live on the ground with the air motor and the generator, and hopefully the mast can be the tank. But that's still adding an air tank, compressor, and air motor where you formerly had none. Cost is the answer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sure, in a country less than 1000Km in extent and with much of the population right in the center. It's farther from Oregon to Southern California than it is from one corner of Spain to another.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
That may be so, but up here in WA we're having to deal with the consequences of the short sightedness and greed of Californians. We could reduce the number of dams we have or allow more water to spill over them here to better serve our commercial fishing industry if we weren't needing to sell that capacity to Californians. Likewise, why should people in Oregon have to lose ground for other purposes so that Californians don't have to put up their own solar arrays?
Californians have been doing this sort of thing for some time, and while we like the money, it really would be better if they stopped behaving like they have the right to export their externalities when folks up here are actually trying to do something about ours.
How much energy it "wastes" is wholly immaterial in circumstances there is a surplus of available energy in the first place, which is the circumstance that the GP poster was talking about.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Texas also produces more wind power than California, and far more than they did when the 2008 incident occurred,
That gap is only stated to grow
Reason, the power of the kind of groups that will block power lines, if not the wind farms themselves, is MUCH smaller in Texas...
At a price... If you don't want your state built over (and I sympathize with you), keep doubling the price. That is the way the market works, and America loves the market...
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Lots of Californians want to pay extra for green power, but do they really care who gets which power, as long as the green power is generated and used? I would guess that the vast majority of them would be fine with paying more to have green power generated and used elsewhere, but that isn't an option - when you opt into a green power program, it says you are getting that power.
The northwest already has plenty of hydropower that can be interrupted briefly while the reservoirs are allowed to fill, or at least not deplete as quickly. The wind power could be diverted to the aluminum potlines and other big users - there is still a grid issue, but much smaller than getting those big surges down to California.
A lot of this could be solved administratively, if the parties involved really wanted to solve it
Likely no one will even see this comment (there are over 300 already), but: Would it make any sense to build flywheels for energy storage on-site at wind farms, to smooth the output as well as not waste excess power generated?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As someone who works in the solar and wind controls business, let me state: this is not a surprise or really even a problem. People who install big wind and solar systems understand, because of the payback horizon of such installations, the limitations of the local distribution system. It is completely normal for big turbines to have to feather/furl/divert themselves during strong wind. The owners and installers design for this. It's factored into the payback time of the project!
The problem here is the sensationalist reporting. Yes, we need better electricity distribution systems for distributed generation, but we in the industry know that. We've known it for years. The guys who financed and installed the system at Columbia River Gorge almost certainly knew it.
So, yes, pump money into building bigger lines in the right places, but that's something we've been doing for more than fifty years. Generation locations are rarely at consumption locations, after all, and that was true for coal, natural gas, etc., just as it is for wind, hydro, and solar. The only problem here is that our 1990's generation locations aren't where tomorrow's generation locations are.