Wind Power And The Power Grid

The NY Times pokes at one of the obvious problem with wind power - our current power grid is not well suited to getting power from where the wind turbines are to where the customers are.

My fave bit:

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

Country roads?  Not a series of tubes?

But seriously - this is one more infrastructure challenge that will, like it or not, require Federal coordination if not Federal money:

Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.

In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.

“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.

I want wind farms in the Dakotas and concentrating solar plants in New Mexico to brighten my day.  And that is because I want to stick it to petro-terrorists and the Russian mafia, not save a stray polar bear or two.  McCain should be pounding this - conservation and increased production is a matter of national security, not environmentalism.

MORE:  Glenn Reynolds opines. Let me hat tip Memeorandum and toss TNR into the mix with a pricetag:

The real problems here are political, not technical—or even economic. (The Energy Department says it would cost $60 billion for a "high-voltage backbone" that would allow wind to generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity—and that would be spread out over many years and millions of customers.)

GET THAT TIGER:  The Tigerhawk has lots more on smart power grids of the future.

Leadership that's shirking.

Comments

[sbw]

This seems like non-useful information passing as news. A private consortium would like to run a power line from a nearby location to NYC. We oppose it. It would increase the local cost of electricity 8-10%. Is that NIMBY? Nonsense. That's good economic sense.

The firm would run the line through a site under consideration for a nano-tech chip fab. NIMBY? Nonsense. Don't disrupt local economic progress. It's good sense.

We've got windfarms up here. I just learned that most bats get killed not by the blades, but by the shear pneumatics of the barometric pressure shift. Bats are people, too, just like nuked gay whales.

And suppose we get a billion jigawatts of windfarms up here, The system needs an equivalent capacity to produce electricity on a slow Biden blowhard day. That's the concept that has T. Boone Pickens, natural gas magnate, supporting windpower.

More time should be spent talking about how close we are to serious improvements in transmission. IIRC there are some just around the corner.

Any projections about what to do ought to take into consideration a sensible timeline from now to then and the technological improvements that are on the way -- including genetically modified oil-producing bacteria and artificial photosynthesis. Fossil fuels may be the best answer to see us through the interim.

But cut the political sound bytes, stifle the breathless CNN teasers, and put the NY Times on a short leash.

[Danube of Thought]

What doesn't appear from the excerpt (and may not appear in the article) is that the 20% figure represents the ceiling on the amount of electrical power than any grid, even an updated one capable of low-loss transmission over great distances, can accommodate. That limit is inherent in the nature of wind power, in that it is not predictable or steady and causes surges and drops in the power it generates (which cannot be stored). It also requires the dedication of huge amounts of real estate per kilowatt. It is a vastly less efficient source of power than is nuclear energy. I do not expect McCain, Obama or the US Congress to address this issue sensibly.

[jwest]

What people fail to recognize is that growth and prosperity depend on cheap, abundant energy. Wind farms, solar panels and the like are simply stopgaps which at best would only maintain our standard of living.

If a political party (like the republicans) would just outline a vision of what this country would be like with unlimited electricity at minimal or no cost, the public would embrace them.

A “Manhattan project” style plan to build 800 identical reactors throughout the country to generate enough to power base and secondary industries, all residential and commercial heating and cooling, charging electric vehicles and a million other uses would capture the imagination of the people.

• No NIMBY problems, communities vote and compete for plants to receive the heaviest discounts on power.
• No transmission line problems.
• Power structure is fully dispersed.
• Government owned – privately run.
• Base and secondary industries would flock to the U.S.
• No environmental/citing/regulatory delays/costs/problems due to government ownership.
• Low per/unit building cost due to single design and high volume.

Hell, promise to heat the expressways in the winter. The point is, the public would embrace a plan that would bring the next large growth cycle to the U.S. as opposed to constantly being berated for using a large enough light bulb to read with.

[Danube of Thought]

Jwest has nailed it. Unfortunately, I know the Dems won't do it, and I have no confidence at all in the GOP or McCain.

[Pofarmer]

Well, damn, JWest beat me to it. Build nukes, lot's of em, then you don't need all the long distance transmission lines.

[Rick Ballard]

jwest,

Excellent plan but you need to address the emotional needs of the ecoweenies (you'll never get the watermelons). Gotta get in a "and this will allow concerned citizens to spend much more time on recycling, environmental habitat rehabilitation, bikepath maintenance and sustainable wildlife wellbeing projects" type hook.

[jwest]

Quick, someone tell McCain I’m still available for the VP slot.

[jwest]

Rick,

If I were pitching this on a liberal site, it would have been all about the children…

And the trees…..

And the furry animals.

Luckily, we get to be honest and rational here.

[Lindak]

Wind is a non-starter. It is very unreliable and can't be used as peaking or base load. It's a fantasy of the ecoweenies.

[A Stoner]

Lets spend $60,000,000,000 to build a less reliable, less efficient, more costly energy source. Ooooooor, we could spend $60,000,000,000 on nuclear and coal power generation plants that are reliable, efficient and less costly.

I say build some nuclear power plants on site at some coal mines and the shale oil deposits and have them churn out millions of barrels of fuel. Plant about 20 nuclear facilities on the coasts and turn them into massive desalination plants and pump the water back into the water tables around the country and bring water tables back up to the levels they were at 100 years ago.

[MikeS]

A Stoner,
You have way too much common sense to ever make it in politics.

[bgates]

Let me see if I'm following this right:
-The relationships between sunlight and oceanic and atmospheric currents are absolutely critical for the survival of humanity;
-Any alteration of present conditions would be catastrophic;
-The worst form of alteration would be something man-made;
-Therefore we need to pull as much kinetic energy as possible directly out of the atmosphere.

[ptg]

I drive through a boondoggle wind farm regularly. The non-efficiency of having a physical plant spread over thousands of acres is incredible.

Not only are about 15%-20% of the turbines 'out of order' at any given time, but the requirement in numerous semi-truck loads of parts and the movement of really huge cranes to effect the repairs is ridiculous. Broken generators often stay out of service for up to a year.

The once bucolic Iowa countryside is reduced to a hellish vision of towers and blades. Farmland is taken out of production on a large scale. I've reported on the same wind farm here, here, and here. You won't like what you see.

The wind doesn't blow all day, every day in NW Iowa, so these monstrosities haven't done anything to reduce the need for full-capacity fossil fuel (coal) fired plants to take up the slack. As far as I can tell, there is more net pollution in the area as a result of these contraptions.

[kim]

Yes, bgates, everyone is downwind from a wind farm, and the turbulence is a force with which to reckon. Bear in mind, that arguments about scale will apply. There are orders of magnitude more energy in the wind than we can take out of it for the present. But particularly with the sensitivity of climate and local weather to land use changes that is being revealed especially at Roger Pielke, Sr's site, sooner or later deleterious downwind effects will be found downwind from a wind farm impacting a large enough class for some law firm to get involved.
============================

[Forbes]

How does TNR get away with saying there is no technical or economic problem to building thousands of miles of transmission lines at a cost of $60 billion?

What? Pennies from heaven? People bidding for the right to have the transmission line run through their backyard? What world does TNR live in?

There is no reason for a federal answer because there is no federal question. This is a solution is search of a problem.

Take one look at the FAA computer foul-up on Tuesday, and imagine what that does to electric reliability when politicians nationalize the power grid.

[bgates]

a boondoggle wind farm
Heh. Boone doggle.

[Rick Ballard]

"The once bucolic Iowa countryside is reduced to a hellish vision of towers and blades."

Who the hell cares what happens in IA? Now, if we were talking about MA or CT, that's a horse of a different liberal.

[sbw]

Or, what we could do is put in space elevators like Arthur C. Clarke suggested. Not only could we concentrate the suns rays at the top, we could use the potential difference between the top and the bottom to feed into the electrical grid.

[Pofarmer]

Let me see if I'm following this right:
-The relationships between sunlight and oceanic and atmospheric currents are absolutely critical for the survival of humanity;
-Any alteration of present conditions would be catastrophic;
-The worst form of alteration would be something man-made;
-Therefore we need to pull as much kinetic energy as possible directly out of the atmosphere.

Well, that's about as consistent as all the whining and moaning the late 90's about how the Pentagon was stockpiling war supplies, followed by whining and moaning around 05-06 that we were alarmingly using them up.

[M. Simon]

DOT,
If you build he turbines on farmland the huge amount of real estate represents a reduction of farm acreage of 1/4%. i.e. 99.75% can be used for farming.

We will all starve.

[M. Simon]

sbw,

I'm really glad we have materials science experts like you here to clue us in.

One little detail: the strongest atomic bonds known can't even theoretically support a space elevator. Let alone practically. Maybe some day. We have no clue even theoretically on how the bonds might be strengthened.

What you want is a launch loop. That we could do.

[M. Simon]

Take one look at the FAA computer foul-up on Tuesday, and imagine what that does to electric reliability when politicians nationalize the power grid.

Another genius.

The power grid is already nationalized as a common carrier. Just like the telephone companies. However, unlike the FAA the grid is market driven and not regulatory driven.

[M. Simon]

A stoner is another genius.

Wind is cheaper than natural gas and serves as a hedge on natural gas prices. Wind and gas are complimentary - dispatchable in the same time frame. Capture wind - save gas.

[M. Simon]

jwest,

Nuke plants are best sited near water. You can't put them in the middle of a cornfield.

Nukes are a good idea. It is not a simple matter to throw them up. Plus you have to build the containment vessels and piping differently depending on location. We may wind up with 5 variations on a design. We will not have one design.

[M. Simon]

Nukes are dangerous because they have 2 to 5 years of fuel in them at start-up.

This means trained operators. It is not just a matter of building plants.

Look for a report on this and a bunch of Congressional action in the next couple of months:

Fusion Report 13 June 008

[Pofarmer]

Another genius.

The power grid is already nationalized as a common carrier. Just like the telephone companies. However, unlike the FAA the grid is market driven and not regulatory driven.

The grid is regionally interconnected but not nationally controlled. You have a set of regional grids that can help supply power to one another. If New Jersey needs more power, then a Peaking plant in Rural MO can help them out, but there is no national control of the grid.

[Pofarmer]

The reason we got the Nat gas peaking plants is because the greens have thwarted plans to build more nuclear or coal as baseload capacity. We won't need more peak load, or variable load stuff in the near future, we need more baseload, and wind won't satisfy that, PLUS you have to have some conventional plant to back up the wind. Just build the damn conventional power and boot the wind., It's stupid to double build.

[Pofarmer]

Here's a link to a Forbe's chart with costs for various power sources.

Behind wind and Biomass please note that it's "after subsidies."

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd137/gorebot/forbes_0721_p034_f1.gif

[M. Simon]

The reason we got the Nat gas peaking plants is because the greens have thwarted plans to build more nuclear or coal as baseload capacity.

The reason we have peaking plants is for peak loads. For base loads we have base load plants. It has nothing to do with greens as much as I hate the mofos.

===

As wind turbines get larger their costs go down. With each doubling in size the costs go down by 2/3s (same as the progression that was in effect for plants from about 1900 to 1950 and for the same reason - economies of scale). Current size is about 3 MW peak. We will be going to 12 MW over the next 10 - 15 years. Do the math.

Pofarmer,

What the heck is levelized cost? Wind subsidy is around 2&cents; a KWh. I'd like to see it phased out over time. Not indexed for inflation.

The grid has national standards (like telephone) the markets are regional because it is not feasible to transmit power farther than about 300 to 600 miles with the voltages in use. In addition because the grid is AC there is the problem of phantom or circulating currents. If the phases of everything and the power paths are not tightly controlled.

It would be nice if we went to 2 MV DC for long distance transmission. That would eliminate the phantom current/phasing problem and allow transmission over distances 2X to 4X longer than currently possible. It would also eliminate the transmission path problem. However that leads to the problem of expanding rights of way at least temporarily.

==

I'm a former Naval Nuke. I worked on aircraft electrical power systems.

One of the problems we are creating for the grid is negative resistance loads (constant power). They are more efficient (constant power with changing voltage) but they reduce the stability margin (damping). And what are negative resistance loads? Electronic power supplies and CFLs. Heh.

[kim]

I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll run out of breath.
===========================

[sbw]

M.Simon, I hope you realized I was tugging a chain with the space elevator thingy. It wasn't evident from your reply. If you were tugging me back, that's okay, too.

[Pofarmer]

What the heck is levelized cost?

I do not know. What I do know, is that most of the stuff on windpower I've seen indicates around $.12/kwh, and most of the stuff I've seen on nuclear is closer to $.03/kwh. It's so dang hard to get a set of numbers that agree. And on the 300-600 mile thing, the way it was explained to me by a guy that builds peaking plants, is that you're really not transmitting the power from MO to NJ. What you are doing is increasing the potential in the grid closer to the peaking plant and pushing the current "downstream" to the folks that need it. In essence, you are boosting the stations in the direction of the places that need it.

The reason we have peaking plants is for peak loads. For base loads we have base load plants. It has nothing to do with greens as much as I hate the mofos.

True enough, but when they are run 24/7 for weeks on end that's not exactly the definition of a peak. ;0)

As wind turbines get larger their costs go down. With each doubling in size the costs go down by 2/3s (same as the progression that was in effect for plants from about 1900 to 1950 and for the same reason - economies of scale). Current size is about 3 MW peak. We will be going to 12 MW over the next 10 - 15 years. Do the math.

I wouldn't assume it's a linear trend. At some point you hit diminishing returns. It will be interesting. The newest turbines going up now are 5MW units. These units are NOT proven. Most of the older 2.5MW units are fairly well known. We don't know what the maintenance and other associated costs with the 5 MW units are going to be. I do know that there are already units idled due to lack of parts. I'm sure there will be a whole new set of problems with 10-12MW units. How BIG will those things have to be?

[Larry]

1. There isn't a grid capacity problem, there's a grid configuration problem. A lot of what is needed is simply instrumentation upgrades.

2. Pofarmer, there's a more basic reason why gas is used for peaking. Gas turbines are far and above the lowest capital option for power generation, and if you're only going to operate a few hours a day, you need low capital. This is also why Pickens' idea won't work. He wants to replace the only feasible fuel for peaking with wind. I think the problem with that should be obvious.

[Larry]

Profarmer, that's not linear. That's log-log. That's a power law. I suspect that Simon's pretty close to right.

[GMax]

There is no national grid. There are a patchwork of grids, partially interconnected at discreet points. I dont know enough to articulate them, but I am familiar enough to know Texas has its own grid and its interconnects with others are very very limited. And while I think the grid is interconnected more in non Texas, its not seamless at all. If someone can better explain this to others here, please do correct anything I said in error.

[jwest]

m.simon

“We may wind up with 5 variations on a design.”

That would nullify the beauty of the plan. What is required isn’t the optimum design for a particular location, but one design carved in stone.

A trained operator should be able to perform at any plant……blindfolded.

By the third plant, the teams doing the building should be able to complete their work…..blind drunk (as usual).

Every flange, fitting, valve, nut and bolt needs to be identical regardless of where these reactors are. Let the design determine the site, but have a design that lends itself to the most diverse site array.

***************************************

The thought behind this plan is to have pure base load generation.

No peaking plants – find ways to waste the surplus energy. Heat the expressways, cool the streets of Las Vegas, encourage people to run there electric heat with all the windows open until productive uses are put online.

Imagine how the dynamic will change when it’s cheaper to grow vegetables in midtown Manhattan than to truck them in from the farm. Feel like irrigating 100,000 acres of corn? Go for it. Install induction coils in the expressways to power and charge electric cars. Manufacture anything and pay high wages, because your biggest cost item is eliminated.

It would be a brave new world that would drive the eco-crazies up a wall.

[Pofarmer]

Profarmer, that's not linear. That's log-log. That's a power law. I suspect that Simon's pretty close to right.

Of what, specifically, are you speaking?

[Pofarmer]

2. Pofarmer, there's a more basic reason why gas is used for peaking. Gas turbines are far and above the lowest capital option for power generation, and if you're only going to operate a few hours a day, you need low capital.

I understand that, but sometimes these plants are used for much more than just "peak".

[cathyf]

An interesting use for wind in real-life America is for heat. In the American midwest (where it is most reliably windy), the winds are most reliable between Oct-Nov and Mar-Apr or so. Places that have put in their own small wind farms (e.g. colleges) have been finding that a good use is to install electric furnaces beside their gas (or sometimes oil) furnaces, and then put in some switches to turn on the gas (or oil) if/when the wind dies down. Because gas and oil furnaces already naturally work by simply turning on and shutting off as needed, they are naturally great complements to wind.

Since wind turbines make electricity, there is this natural tendency to think of the power only in the context of electrical use, and to think in terms of A/C, which is the big thirsty user of electricity. But up here in the north, A/C isn't even a necessity -- it's winter cold that will kill you. And the most efficient way to heat in the north is to directly burn gas (or oil) in your furnace right there in the building that you are heating. Wind just seamlessly adds on to the existing system -- just like now if you have a balmy week in January and your thermostat turns the heat off and it translates into you using less gas/oil, when you have a wind turbine and an electric furnace any wind energy you put into your electric furnace translates into gas and/or oil which doesn't get burned in your gas/oil furnace and is available for another use. And since gas/oil is totally storable, it is available for another use at another time.

[Pofarmer]

That's all fine cathy, but I seriously doubt if it's economically feasible to do that. Wind energy isn't "free".

[kim]

It's worth considering why first steam, and then oil, replaced wind in sea commerce, despite the increased expense of fuel and machines, and why fossil fuel replaced wind and humanpower for sea warfare, despite the need for coaling stations dotted here and there around the globe.
================================

[cathyf]

The point, pofarmer, is that it doesn't have to be free -- merely cheaper than gas/oil. When you are talking about wind vs nuclear or coal, the problem is that nuclear/coal is, in a very real way, free. Because a nuclear/coal plant has a startup and/or shutdown cycle measured in weeks, once a coal/nuclear plant is fired up, the next few weeks of electricity have a marginal cost of zero (all of the costs are sunk costs.) Wind is reliable over a span of hours/days (you can predict how windy it's going to be pretty well in a short-term forecast.)

The problem with using wind as a "complement" to a coal/nuclear plant is that you start the coal/nuclear plant up and then you have to leave it running. So even when the wind comes to life and starts turning the turbines, the only way that you can "use" the wind power is to throw away the exact same amount of coal/nuclear power.

Over the short time (where wind power is reliable and predictable), nuclear and coal energy is free. As pofarmer points out, wind is not free, so it will never be rational to substitute it for nuclear or coal-fired electrical generation. On the other hand, an individual gas, oil or propane furnace, or diesel or propane generator is designed to cycle on/off according to demand over a period of minutes. So any wind power that you can generate that substitutes for gas, oil, diesel or propane in a furnace/generator situation doesn't need to be free -- it only needs to be cheaper than the gas, oil, diesel, propane, etc. that it allows you to save by using the wind instead.

If you want to consider the nuttiest thing we do in power generation right now, it's to use natural gas to run an electric power plant (built as a "peaking" plant but now running 365 days/year) during winter months and use it to run people's electric heat. When they could burn the gas directly in their furnaces and use like half of the amount of gas for the same amount of heat.

[Bill Befort]

Why IS it so difficult to get the Left onboard with nuclear, the obvious large-scale non-carbon energy source? It wasn't always that way; in their original 1962 Port Huron Statement, the Students for a Democratic Society took a distinctly favorable view.
"With nuclear energy," they said in their founding document, "whole cities can easily be powered," adding that "Our monster cities, based historically on the need for mass labor, might now be humanized, broken into smaller communities, powered by nuclear energy, arranged according to community decision." That is, SDS originally saw atomic energy as providing the economic basis for the social reorganizations they favored. Nobody seems to remember this, but I think it shows that there's nothing inherently Left or Right about nuclear power; the Left became anti-nuclear by historical accident and has stayed that way through inertia.

[battery]

If you want to consider the nuttiest thing we do in power generation right now, it's to use natural gas to run an electric power plant (built as a "peaking" plant but now running 365 days/year) during winter months and use it to run people's electric heat. When they could burn the gas directly in their furnaces and use like half of the amount of gas for the same amount of heat

[sophy]

We all love game, if you want to play it, please buy wakfu kamas and join us.