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International Energy Agency Predicts Wind Will Dominate Europe's Grid By 2027 (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Today, roughly 25 percent of the European Union's power currently comes from nuclear sources, with coal and gas each delivering a little above 20 percent. Wind constitutes 10 percent of the European Union's energy mix. But by 2027, IEA's forecasts (PDF) put wind just beating all other electricity sources with a 23-percent share of the energy mix. "Other Renewables" like biomass plants contribute a little over 20 percent, gas adds 20 percent, nuclear contributes just a little below 20 percent, and coal declines to just over 10 percent. Solar energy contributes about six or seven percent in the IEA's 2027 scenario. The European Union has a wealth of wind energy, especially offshore wind energy, a sector in which the EU is the global leader. Offshore wind allows turbines to be built bigger, and coastal winds are often stronger and more consistent than onshore winds. [The IEA forecasts 200 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity by 2040.]
1. Over a large enough area, the wind is always blowing somewhere. You just need enough capacity. Also: have you ever been near the North Sea? The weather is brutal there.
2. Negative pricing was seen in the UK long before intermittent renewable energy was a significant source of energy for electricity generation.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's a good question lets look.
How Much Does it Cost to Produce One Ton of Aluminum?
Although the newest smelters can be closer to 12,500 kWh per ton, let’s say most smelters are consuming electricity at 14,500-15,000 kWh/ton of ingot produced.
Admittedly Aluminum production is one of the most energy intense industries but the common factor is large scale consumption of power and the need for reliable power. You really don't want to expose a steel mill to a brownout.
Wind is both more expensive and less reliable than conventional sources which is why Germany still operates brown coal power plants for it's steel industry. The more wind you have the more expensive your overall power costs.
Fuck
We've been doing wind-power since the early 1970s, and it makes up 50% of our energy, and NOW you tell me it doesn't work?!? Why didn't you bring us this revelation decades ago, before we made it work?!?!?
Actually some heavy industries love wind power-- they get paid to use energy at times. Wind is a great component of a diversified energy grid, especially when the turbines are geographically dispersed. He challenge for wind is its low capacity factor, which means you need to cover ~35% of its rating with either more (geographically dispersed) wind turbines, or another source of dispatchable power.
When you do it with wind, you run the risk that you end up with over-capacity, and you make the other power sources more expensive because you artificially reduce their capacity factor from ~90% to ~10-20%.
Because Europe is not going to take any measures to keep their grid stable?
I sort of suspect that they are going keep that a high priority as wind capacity is installed, just as they do now and have always done. A whole array of measures are available (long distance transmission to even things out, pumped storage, battery storage, having sectors that can shut down or reduce demand when needed, postpone planned maintenance outages, etc.). Even the pessimistic analyses of fossil fuel proponents admit that the stability problems they predict won't start showing up until the penetration reaches about 30%. This forecast has it increasing to only 27%.
Also the emphasis on randomness is odd, since wind patterns are not in fact random at all, and are predictable with very good accuracy several days out. We aren't talking about the wind blowing on your lawn, but across a huge subcontinent.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The whole base load thing only came to existence because of coal power plants that weren't able to follow the load. As soon as they (and the nukes) are closed, the base load concept will be retired.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap