Ontario blows it: Dealing with erratic wind power brings huge costs

with an adequate system for storing energy produced in peak moments for use in slack times. Like using solar power to light your house at night.

Our capability to generate and consume electrical energy has greatly outpaced our capacity for storing it. Even the biggest battery we can devise only stocks as much energy as a nuclear reactor produces in eight seconds.

This goes to show how difficult it is to introduce a power source with such different characteristics into an existing grid design.

Gee, who could have predicted something like this?

Con-doll-sleezza Rice, of course.

Find a stick to bite down on. You can do it!

It can't start with using alternatives to produce at current consupmtion rates.

I'm sure we can find a way to do alternatives, but we're not going to have all this stuff. I don't mean just stuff stuff, I mean stuff. We got a free trial with oil, if you don't count the environmental impact in the cost. That was in the ground, built up over millions of years, and it was tangible. Wind and solar power are not. At some point we're going to have to deal with physical reality.

According to Terence and Philip of the OpEd, one would think that wind power caused that nasty old European blackout last November - but alas, that was not the case...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6121166.stm

Q&A: Europe's power blackout

The German distributor E.ON admitted it caused the blackouts, by switching off a power cable across the River Ems to allow a cruise ship to pass.

This meant areas to the west were left with a power deficit, while cables in the east were overloaded.

Supplies cut out in Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Italy.

The EU's Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has called for the European Transmission System Operators (ETSO) to identify the problem urgently and ensure that such a blackout does not happen again.

<more>

If we are to believe the OpEd, Ontario *Hydro* cannot balance variation in wind power output with...umm..."hydro power" like they do in Scandinavia and the Northwest US???

Really??

Are we to believe that Ontario suffers summer blackouts and brownouts from those bad old wind farms???

News to me.

And if Ontario worries about lack of wind power during the "summer doldrums" as the authors seem to be, then diversifying Ontario's generating mix with large-scale PV would solve many of their problems".

and this...

"Modern smog-free coal generators, like those operating now in Alberta, the United States, Europe and Japan, are the reliable, secure and affordable alternative. If real market competition existed, only a heavy carbon tax would prevent coal from blowing wind power away."

Is that what we need???

and this...

"With one of the most nuclear-dependent grids in the world, Ontario is poorly suited to host wind power."

I smell a solution here...

:evilgrin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Post

The Post was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black to provide a voice for Canadian conservatives and to combat what he and many Canadian conservatives consider to be a liberal bias in Canadian newspapers, especially in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.

<snip>

The Post continues to lose money – financial analysts estimate annual losses at about $15 million – and rumours persist that the Aspers will close down the Post due to its lack of profitability. Others believe, however, that the Aspers will keep the newspaper going in order to have a political voice in Canada, notably on issues such as Israel. The Post today operates under the editorial direction of David Asper, an outspoken and controversial figure who is generally considered to lack the stature and business acumen of his late father.

<snip>

Controversy
Main article: 2006 Iranian sumptuary law

On May 19, 2006, the newspaper ran two pieces alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law requiring religious minorities to wear special identifying badges. One piece was a front page news item titled "IRAN EYES BADGES FOR JEWS" accompanied by a 1935 picture of two Jews bearing Nazi-ordered yellow badges. Later on the same day, experts began coming forward to deny the accuracy of the Post story. The story proved to be false, but not before it had been picked up by a variety of other news media and generated comment from world leaders. Comments on the story by the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper caused Iran to summon Canada's ambassador to Tehran for an explanation.

On May 24, 2006, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Doug Kelly, published an apology for the story on Page 2, admitting that it was false and the National Post had not exercised enough caution or checked enough sources.<5>

<snip>

...That show this article is factually wrong? I merely ask, because you both seem to have forgotten to link to them.

Yes, I'm sure the National Post staff drive hummers, eat babies, and club fluffy kittens to death with patagonian toothfish. But the thread is actually about wind variability and it's impact on the electrical grid, remember?

intermittent power sources until they comprise 20% or more of total generating capacity - Ontario has a long way to go before they reach this threshold.

And then there is the Inconvenient Truth that Denmark has not encountered any significant grid management problems with wind power - even though it comprises 20% of their generating mix (and will ramp up to >50% in the near future).

Denmark can cheerfully import hydroelectricity from Norway at a moments notice. Which is, of course, the only renewable that works when you want it to. Have you run the figures for building enough hydro to support the entire Canadian grid on a windless night, when everyone's plugging in their PHEVs for the morning?

(Of course, Denmark also import electricity from Germany and Sweden, but I guess we'd better gloss over that. There might an atomic taint to it.)

Or are we back to waiting for non-hydro TWh storage to come out of Lovins' butt riding a flying monkey?

Or, which is probably more likely, do you not give a toss about the other 80% (and of course the transport and heating and industrial uses) so long as you get to do some greenwash?

Oops, sorry, I meant 50% "in the near future". Let me know how near that future is, BTW, because we seem to be running out of time faster than than expected.

Incidentally, I see the Danes are Building a nice, new gas pipeline from Norway, and another running gas to and from Poland. Funny sort of renewable paradise they're building...

Or is gas OK so long as it's "natural"? :shrug:

...on the part of the writer of the story/hatchet-job. Who has been financially ruined?

But the producers are selling at ¢11/KWh, and the consumers are buying at around ¢6/KWh.

Unless they suddenly introduce a carbon tax (which is about as likely as my cat inventing ZPE) somebody, somewhere, is going to pay the difference: kids, maybe, or http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2007/26/c4319.html">sick people, or even wildlife. OK, I'm starting to sound like Bjørn Lomborg, so I'd better shut the hell up, but you don't need to be Maynard Keynes to see this isn't entirely sustainable.

...,& obstruction of justice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black

Who would of thought that?
Probably not Nadair.

Thought most designs within the last 15yrs could 100% load follow within 50 mS or so. While earlier plants might only be able to handle 50% load change in the same timeframe without tripping a shutdown.

the wind power folks need to do their
homework.


for an established technology,
sad that, the wind people still expect subsidies,
and/or, expect others to provide reserve for free.

:eyes:

please be specific.

Instant on power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

To store all that water, and we'll be set.

Decide which rivers to drown.

You want to lose the Pit River trout fishery? :shrug:

Why bother.

an abstract concept like "energy independence" is one thing. "Carbon neutral" is still more abstract.

But telling the good folks of California that their globally unique wild trout fisheries on the Pit River, the McCloud River, and the Upper Sacramento Rivers are going to be flooded out hits home.

(Not to mention the archeological sites in the area...)

And why prime trout fisheries would have to sited for pump-back hydro installations is beyond me.

But, hey, party on. The do nothing approach is always an option.

Why bother.

not surprisingly.

electricity produced at night,
during times of moderate temperature,
is worth next to nothing.

off topic, but.
how much is the electric rate for street lighting?

I read the conclusions of the articles. It was better writing than the RW crap that is being spewed by some country club editorialist in Canada. And nobody referred to a "disaster for consumers". I have the paper edition.

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pes/public/2007/nov/index.html


To Capture the Wind
The Status and Future of Wind Energy Technology

Queuing Up
Interconnecting Wind Generation into the Power System

Accomodating Wind's Natural Behavior
Advances in Insights and Methods for Wind Plant Integration

What ComesFirst?
Transmission Planning and Competitive Electricity Market Operation for Delivery of Wind Energy

Predicting the Wind
Models and Methods of Wind Forecasting for Utility Operations Planning

European Balancing Act
Impact of High Wind Penetration on Balancing and Frequency Control in Europe

FROM THE EDITOR

The Power Of Wind
Generation and applications

by Mel Olken

Two short years ago, in The November/December 2005 issue, our theme centered on the integration of wind-generated energy into the electric power system. That issue, and the subject covered, proved to be of great interest to our readers and was coupled with the generation of a fair degree of controversy and questions. In the ensuing two years, the interest and the questions have not abated, but the technology has certainly matured as the application of wind generated energy has grown. In recognition of these facts, PES has since then established a Wind Power Coordinating Committee chaired by Dick Piwko to insure that the Society remains on the cutting edge of technology in this area.
Charlie Smith and Brian Parsons, who were the guest editors of the first issue, have once again volunteered to oversee this issue. And, as before, they have assembled a formidable array of articles to guide us through the intricacies and issues associated with the application of wind power. Their guest editor column reviews the state of renewal energy penetrations in the United States where goals are defined by national and state governments producing a mixed picture across the country. They also look at Europe where national policies supporting renewable energy development were adopted some time ago, which encouraged significant investment in wind plants. Indeed, by the end of 2006, of the 75,000 MW of wind capacity installed worldwide Europe had approximately 50,000 MW. They review the recent history of the technology, pointing out that wind plants are now as large or larger than many conventional power plants and require the same sort of terminal behavior as that of a conventional plant in terms of the ability to ride through a voltage excursion while remaining connected to the system, and provide reactive power support to the system immediately after a fault. In more blunt terms, the case is made that the wind plant (note that the term "farm" is not used) must be treated as an integral part of the electric system. They further decry the use of the term "intermittent" by reviewing the operation of the wind plant and redefining that operation as one of "variable output."

In This Issue
The six feature articles with their lead authors, which comprise our issue, are listed below in order of appearance. They are reviewed in detail in the Guest Editorial column:
"To Capture the Wind" by Bob Thresher
"Queuing Up" by Bob Zavadil
"Accommodating Wind's Natural Behavior" by Ed DeMeo
"What Comes First?" by Dick Piwko
"Predicting the Wind" by Bernie Ernst
"European Balancing Act" by Thomas Ackermann