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In Oregon, Wind Power Surges Disrupting Grid

Posted by timothy on from the need-more-flywheels dept.

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."

36 of 506 comments (clear)

  1. Store in a water tower by retro83 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Store in a water tower by thijsh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Towers won't work, you need a lake to be able to store a capacity you can actually use. Dutch wind energy is currently being stored in Norwegian lakes (because here it's flat, and they have mountain lakes). Apparently the advantage was worth laying the worlds longest underwater power line between nations.

      But taking this idea a step further for local power generation: Why convert to electricity in the first place? If you pump water to a higher place you might as well let the windmills pump it directly (that's why the Dutch invented them after all), you have an immediate buffer in the lake so you can never pump too hard, and the hydroelectric generators can be throttled easily. You have the benefits of a buffer and a higher efficiency, as well as a more simple design (no high-tech generators needed in every windmill). Damn great idea, if I say it myself... Must be because I'm Dutch. :-)

    2. Re:Store in a water tower by Councilor+Hart · · Score: 4, Funny

      You want to pump water over what kind of distances? From holland to norway?

    3. Re:Store in a water tower by thijsh · · Score: 5, Informative

      Pumping water with wind energy insures you can use wind energy as a baseline power supply (although it's actually hydro energy that achieves it). You lose some efficiency in raw power output, but since you can spread the use out to all day wind or no wind you increase the worth of that generated power a lot. The biggest disadvantages of both wind and solar is that they can't supply the base load 24/7. Mitigating that problem by reducing efficiency is a trade-off that can really help renewable energy become more mainstream and reduce our dependence on fossil fuel (which is still used mostly to supply baseline power). Also with scarce wind available this may still increase the value of the wind energy enough to make it worth the trade-off... Maybe not today, but soon enough.

      As for the 'as a Dutch you should know'; when you quote someone it helps to also read the part you replaced with '[etc.]' since I already noted that windmills were created originally to pump water...

    4. Re:Store in a water tower by thijsh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think journalists are slowly becoming aware that for something to be green there is more to it than people telling them it's green... They love a scoop, and an article about 150% loss of the power, which basically makes it an exercise in futility would be a good thing for them..

      And the natural environment we had here centuries ago was already fast-changing, the rivers and sea shaped the land constantly. It was not an environment you could live in comfortably, and there weren't any old forests. Human involvement first started by keeping land the way it was, and later adding more land to it. I'd hardly call this 'destroyed', but the original nature is indeed severely reduced and most is shaped into something useful.

      As they say: "God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands" :)

    5. Re:Store in a water tower by demonlapin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Pumped-water storage is the current tech of choice for grid-scale batteries. You do need nearby hills, but it works fairly well. List.

    6. Re:Store in a water tower by c0lo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Pumping water with wind energy insures you can use wind energy as a baseline power supply (although it's actually hydro energy that achieves it). You lose some efficiency in raw power output,

      I didn't say that balancing the input/output and buffering is a bad idea.
      I only said that if the energy is needed in the grid, you should deliver it directly instead of storing it in water towers.

      Maybe I took wrong your first post when you say taking this idea a step further for local power generation: Why convert to electricity in the first place?: it looked to me as you suggested to always store it as hydro - if that's indeed what you were saying, my argument was against "always" which should be replaced with "when in excess".

      Mitigating that problem by reducing efficiency is a trade-off that can really help renewable energy become more mainstream and reduce our dependence on fossil fuel

      So, reducing the efficiency plus investing in a hydro buffer does make the energy become mainstream? Something is wrong in my world which, like/agree with it or not, is currently driven by prices. Until the freaking "price on carbon" is not injected into the world's economy (in no matter how: "trade-able emission quota", "penalties for extra emission", etc) I don't think this is going to happen.

      Other than that, even buffering an unpredictable input it is not without technical difficulties:
      a. in your example, to store the excess in Norway lakes, you need a cable that's currently the wonder of submersible cables. And TFA was saying "the grid is the bottleneck, otherwise the CA people would be happy to suck the energy in". If you need to lay a line to the appropriate lake and build a hydro on it, wouldn't it be cheaper to just enhance the current grid which acts as a bottleneck?
      b. what if you don't have enough water around to raise in the tower/lake? The "buffering" solution will still be valid, except that hydro is not the only buffer possible
      c. what if the lake you use doesn't have enough capacity for the excess you record? What makes more economic sense: invest in a "bigger lake" or just let the excess go?

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    7. Re:Store in a water tower by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The idea of environmentalism has changed drastically since the late 1960s when people started talking about it. Back then it was poisons in the air and water; In Cahokia, IL where I grew up, the aptly named Dead Creek's water was so polluted the creek caught fire. A mile north in Sauget you could not drive past Monsanto with your windows rolled down or the air would burn your lungs. There were 100,000 fifty five gallon drums filled with toxic waste buried along the banks of the Mississippi river just west of Cahokia. There was lead in gasoline, PCBs in electrical transformers, etc. The environment in the US (at least in Cahokia) was toxic.

      After Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water act, these problems disappeared over time. The vegetation is a brighter green now, and you can drive past Monsanto with your windows down and not even smell any bad smells.

      Nobody who lived before this environmental legislation, or had a loved one crippled or killed due to an employer's negligence before OSHA, is against government regulation unless they're sociopaths who don't give a damn about other people's health, well being, or livlihood. That includes the BP apologists; I feel for the poor folks living on the Gulf.

      I'd rather see windmills than coal, gas, or oil fired generators; I can't see how windmills will poison anything. I really don't care about a few dead birds; the day after the tornados hit here in Springfield in 2006, there were thousands of dead birds everywhere (and far fewer trees for them to live in). The bird population didn't take long at all to reappear.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    8. Re:Store in a water tower by vlm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even better would be a means of pulling carbon from the air over at the generation plant, generating hydrogen gas or an alcohol, then pumping that fuel via pipeline to a place near the city, and burning it there.

      1) Windmills tend to be in agricultural areas, because the land is cheap and too windy for the average resident anyway.

      2) Factory farming / big agribusiness is also located there

      3) FF / Big Agro requires fertilizers, in part derived from ammonia, to function

      4) Ammonia production via Haber-Bosch requires nitrogen (air) and purified hydrogen (electrolyzed water) and a crapton of energy.

      5) Conveniently overreving windmills have lots of air and a crapton of energy. Most windmills are either offshore (surrounded by H2O) or are in a non-arid area. Perhaps Oregon has a lack of water, don't know.

      So, the rural areas will make their own fertilizer using excess power. Cool.

      Of course stereotypical Haber-Bosch plants are all designed to run continuously so as to maximize capital return, and why the heck not. That having a variable source of power has never been a plant requirement, so plants would not tolerate it, does not mean that its technologically impossible to design and build a Haber-Bosch plant that only runs during low demand hours, or that can tolerate a modest disruption to incoming power.

      The main problem is electric power companies are not really fertilizer companies. Oh sure, just like any other major American corporation, their management and marketing people spew out vast quantities of B.S., and B.S. is a great nitrogen fertilizer, but its not their core competency. Some fertilizer company would pretty much have to move out there and set up a plant with Very favorable contracted energy cost rates. But most fertilizer companies are dead set on using depleting natural gas as their H2 source...

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    9. Re:Store in a water tower by radtea · · Score: 4, Insightful

      unless they're sociopaths who don't give a damn about other people's health, well being, or livlihood.

      Never assume venality where stupidity will do. There are actually two types of people who are opposed to government regulation: the sociopaths, and the dupes. I know this because I was once a dupe.

      The arguments for "the free market" can sound pretty compelling to someone who is naive and basically decent, who doesn't appreciate the depths of human depravity in the wild. We still see libertarians regularly on /. who are so sincerely addled by their ideology that they don't recognize state failures like Somalia and the tribal lands in northern Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan as real world examples of their theories in action. They simply can't believe that people would behave in such obviously idiotic, sub-optimal ways for centuries or longer.

      Yet anyone who looks at history realizes that stateless, unregulated societies are unstable against tribalism. If humans were economically rational automatons they would not be, but we aren't.

      On the flip side, being "for" regulation doesn't mean that we can't disagree vigorously over what kind of regulation is appropiate. But having that debate means first figuring out that we aren't sociopaths on either the left or the right (and don't kid yourself: at the level of the political leadership the left has always been dominated by sociopaths, just like the right, and for the same reasons.)

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
    10. Re:Store in a water tower by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree. There needs to be a balance in all things. Let's talk about just the simple things that have improved. When I was a kid and went to the local convenience store the parking lot was covered with pop tops! After going to the beach you checked your feet for tar every day.
      There was lead in the gas and no real emission controls on cars.
      looking back I am amazed just how much better things are now than back in the "good old days".
      Oh and my father worked for a paper mill. They had a car wash at the plant so the fumes wouldn't eat the paint off your car too quickly.
      Not to mention that in the 40s and 50s that people actually thought it was okay to play with nukes above ground! Thankfully that was before my time.
      I am not an extreme green person but regulation is just like any other from of law. A little bit now and then really helps.

      Now back to this wind issue.
      I just don't think that wind will work large scale because of these issues. It is not reliable enough. Yes you could use water pumping to store excess but you then have the problem that in the US most wind fields are not gong to be in the mountains. The great plains are very flat.
      The other issue is the impact of doing that water storage. Damming up valley's is not environmentally clean. You destroy one ecosystem and replace it with a different one. I still think nuclear is the best solution for now. That I an am really hoping the Polywell reactor will work.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    11. Re:Store in a water tower by russ1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You want to pump water over what kind of distances? From holland to norway?

      no no no.... use wind power to create electricity locally and heat local water so it evaporates into clouds. Then blow those clouds over the lakes in Norway using really big fans. Then fire lasers at the clouds so it rains into those lakes to get the hydro electricity you need. Do I have to think of everything.... gosh.

    12. Re:Store in a water tower by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      Local energy storage with hydrogen, 98% efficiency? HA!

      Round trip, it's closer to 50% using ceramic fuel cells, and the capital costs are absurd compared to other options relative to power provided (and only moderate relative to energy stored).

      The two most cost-effective storage methods at this point in time are batteries and pumped hydro. In most areas, pumped hydro is cheaper. Pumped hydro does *not* require continuous incoming water (beyond what is lost to evaporation), and the water pumped need not be freshwater (it could be a mining pond contaminated with nuclear waste for all they care). As far as batteries go, there are several techs that are all reasonable and depend on what you need -- lead acid and various flow batteries (most famously, vanadium redox) being the prime examples.

      Also, not all energy storage is for *supply* buffering. Worldwide, the overwhelming majority of it is for *demand* buffering. And not all of the demand buffering is even due to power plant limitations; some is due to line limitations. For example, one of the Rattlesnake lines out in Utah has a vanadium redox buffer for voltage support out in Castle Valley. The area is sensitive, so they have trouble building new lines, and a lot of the places that need power are rather isolated, so they can't justify increasing the capacity of their existing lines. So what they did was build a big buffer in the middle of it that stores power at night and releases it during the day.

      Energy storage does add a cost, but it's not prohibitive. It's generally a couple cents per kilowatt hour, give or take.

      --
      The chloride owes the sodium money.
    13. Re:Store in a water tower by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      A libertarian is an anarchist with a trust fund.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. From TFA, wind is fine. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by hey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree. Its like a programmer saying "the program works...just don't click there"

    2. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by AlecC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it is a grid designed for slow turn on/off generators (coal, oil, nuclear) being fed with fast turn on/off generators. It is like taking a truck off-road. A truck perfectly suitable for is normal job is not fit for purpose on un-metalled road. The grid is not fit for the purpose to which it is now being put.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
    3. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by mcvos · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Grid maintenance also means you have to update it when requirements change. More reliance on wind energy means you need more flexibility in where your electricity is generated and how much of it is generated. Leaving your grid the way it was while you change where and how electricity is generated, is rather stupid.

    4. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by AlecC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Certainly. But we have a frog-in-hot-water situation here, with political complications. The grid as built can take a small amount of wind power. But as the amount of wind power increases, the limits of its adaptability are reached. And now you have the problem of who pays for the necessary upgrades. The guy who added the last windmill that exceeded the limit? All windmill owners? The Oregon grid, which needs upgrading? The California consumers who want this green power? Everybody says it is not their responsibility and the US, with its dislike of government control, does not have the mechanisms for someone to take charge and decide who pays for it in the short term, and how they are going to get paid back buy the other beneficiaries.

      The trouble is that, since this is a huge one-off, market forces don't work very well. Of course, eventually the pain caused will open a market opportunity and business will find a way to solve the problem. But without a so-called socialist supervisor authority to predict and control, business are going to wait until the pain is excruciating before suppling the demand. In the long term the market will work; in the short term the economy and people will suffer.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
    5. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by Pascal+Sartoretti · · Score: 5, Informative

      THIS IS the problem with the currently renewable energy sources. We do not have control over their output.

      No : the major source of renewable energy today is hydroelectric dams, whose output can be nearly 100% controlled.

    6. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or an engineer saying "the antenna around the phone works... just don't touch it there"

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    7. Re:From TFA, wind is fine. by Nadaka · · Score: 4, Informative

      Solar thermal also does not face this problem. It has very, very predictable peak loads and any excess can be stored directly as heat in an underground reservoir of molten salt or heated oil for nighttime use, or you can simply turn a valve and direct the steam away from the traditional turbines.

  3. Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Green energy is destroying things. Let's go back to burning things just to be safe.

  4. New efficient energy storage with hydrogen by Framboise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    McPhy claims to be able to store energy at 98% efficiency with hydrogen in solid containers,
    which are precisely aimed for solving such problems.

    http://www.mcphy.com/en/products/iso-containers.php

    If I were investor I would look more closely to such technological advances.

    1. Re:New efficient energy storage with hydrogen by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The site you link claims 97%, not 98%.

      And that's just storage. In practice, you get 70% efficiency for making the hydrogen from water and around 50% from a fuel cell turning it back into electricity. Inverter losses are typically another 2-3% (98% efficiency) on both ends.

      0.98 * 0.70 * 0.97 * 0.50 * 0.98 = 22.6% overall.

      Pumped water storage is between 70% to 85% efficient overall.
      =Smidge=

  5. Re:explanation about the condition of the grid by AlecC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Much ado about nothing by amorsen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So the wind turbines had to reduce production for a few hours. Is it really worth doing massive build-outs to fix that? It's sad to see energy go to waste, but on the other hand you can go outside and watch all the energy going to waste because there isn't a wind turbine to catch it in the first place!

    As long we're wasting less than 10% of power (and right now we're below 1% at least in wind-farm-filled Denmark) I don't see the problem. I bet planned and unplanned maintenance accounts for several percent anyway.

    --
    Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    1. Re:Much ado about nothing by Ascylon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  7. store as Hydrogen by xirtam_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've suggested this elsewhere for other wind farms. How about having a hydrogen electrolysis plant nearby where water can be turned into Hydrogen that can be turned back into electricity during non-peak wind (tidal, or whatever) periods. Hydrogen can be burnt turning it back into water easily and produces heat that can be turned into electricity cheaply and easily. The most expensive part of the whole unit would be the hydrogen storage. This can safely be placed underground to avoid leaks and explosions if required.

  8. Re:explanation about the condition of the grid by AlecC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  9. It can be done - Spain example by davaguco · · Score: 4, Informative

    It can be done. Just check how Spain manages to cope with a 41% wind energy electricity production: https://demanda.ree.es/demanda.html Check January 14th, 2010 (January = Enero).

    --
    Please google and research "peak oil" a bit. You will discover this crisis is a lot worse than they have told you
  10. hydrogen is a joke by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Informative

    people please stop talking about hydrogen

    it wastes too much energy in electrolysis and then burning. plus its a nightmare to store and handle. there's far more efficient energy storage mediums that are far easier to manage

    i wish people would just forget about hydrogen, but it seems to have entered the public conscience and will be a long time in banishing from consideration. hydrogen is not a serious green energy contender, and never will be

    its too wasteful to convert to, and then convert back from, and too messy to handle. please understand these simple obvious facts that make hydrogen a complete waste of your time

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:hydrogen is a joke by BeardedChimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:hydrogen is a joke by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oregon could add "world's biggest flywheel" to the list of sites to see.

  11. Re:Stop putting it on the grid! by DeathToBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    The word is 'feather', people. You feather the blades.

    --
    Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
  12. In Texas, the Opposite Problem by 1sockchuck · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are several ways that variable wind generation loads can present challenges. Texas, which has a large concentration of wind generation facilities, experienced an incident in early 2008 in which a sudden dropoff in wind triggered a grid emergency. A cold front came through, generation dipped, and utilities had to implement power shaving strategies, primarily reducing service to large customers who trade lower rates by being "interruptible."