Report Shows New Transmission Can Help Wind Energy Supply a Third of U.S. Electricity
(Please note, material from US Department of Energy—copyright concerns are nil.)
https://energy.gov/eere/articles/report-shows-new-transmission-can-help-wind-energy-supply-third-us-electricity
January 9, 2017 - 11:06am
[font size=3]The Energy Department today released a report which confirms that adding even limited electricity transmission can significantly reduce the costs of expanding wind energy to supply 35% of U.S. electricity by 2050. The report, titled Reducing Wind Curtailment through Transmission Expansion in a Wind Vision Future and authored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), affirms the findings of the Energy Department’s 2015 Wind Vision, which showed that a future in which wind provides 20% of U.S. electricity in 2030 and 35% in 2050 is achievable and would provide significant economic, energy security, and health benefits to the nation.
For the study, NREL simulated operation of the electric power grid under a scenario where 35% of electricity comes from wind in the year 2050 using PLEXOS, an integrated modeling tool commonly used by utilities and transmission organizations. The study focuses on the Western Interconnection grid, which includes 11 states, two Canadian provinces, and parts of northern Mexico where the U.S. grid crosses the border. The study includes a baseline scenario assuming no significant transmission expansion across the western grid, as well as three scenarios with varying levels of transmission buildout.
In the baseline scenario with no transmission expansion, substantial renewable energy curtailment—times in which wind farm operators are told not to produce energy due to limited capacity on the grid—could become a major issue. In this scenario, about 15.5% of wind energy capacity goes unused with consequent increases in system costs as a result of idled wind generation. The study also finds that if just four currently proposed transmission projects are built, wind curtailment can be reduced by about half, cutting lost generating potential to 7.8%. If the nation deploys additional transmission beyond those four proposed projects, wind curtailment can be reduced even further—allowing full use of wind energy, reducing generation costs, and unleashing additional economic and societal benefits.
This report quantifies on a regional scale what we’ve seen happen in Texas in recent years; wind curtailment on Texas’s grid ranged from 8% to 17% between 2009 and 2011, but fell to only 1% after new transmission lines and other upgrades were completed under Texas’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zone initiative.
Wind power is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation in the United States and is already providing substantial economic, energy security, and health benefits. This study affirms that even limited additions to transmission capacity would allow more wind energy from the Mountain States to power load centers on the West Coast. On the other hand, a lack of new transmission capacity could limit the growth of wind energy and its potential benefits. Overall, the results of the study underline that utility grids can reliably operate with more than 35% wind energy and 12% solar energy, and emphasize that even limited transmission expansion can significantly ease the path to a renewable energy future.
Read the report, or join us Tuesday, January 10, for a webinar with the report authors.
The Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) accelerates development and deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and market-based solutions that strengthen U.S. energy security, environmental quality, and economic vitality. EERE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office leads the nation’s efforts to research and develop innovative technologies, lower the costs, and accelerate the deployment of wind power through activities such as enhancing our understanding of how wind energy is integrated and transmitted on the electric grid. Read more about our support for grid integration research.
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It's promoted as a way of exporting wind energy, but once it's installed there's plenty of room on the lines for cheap, dirty coal generated electricity.
That's why states like Montana, Utah, and Wyoming are so enthusiastic about this. Sure they say it's about the wind, but it's bullshit.
We ought to be tearing these lines down, not building more of them.
I know people are going to give me shit for that, but anything that feeds our high energy industrial society is bad for the earth, and that includes giant solar and wind projects.
The fossil fuel industry is very good at turning "alternate energy" enthusiasts and anti-nuclear activists into unwitting shills for them. The "natural" gas industry is the worst of the lot. There's nothing "natural" about it, and the word "natural" was a marketing term even when it first began to replace "town" gas.
Town gas had carbon monoxide in it; it could kill your family. Natural gas didn't.
Now natural gas is "better than coal." But it's not all that great. Fracking pollutes groundwater, and methane that leaks in the extraction process and distribution system is a potent greenhouse gas. (Rice fields are another major source of anthropogenic methane emissions.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
And there's no escaping the fact that wind and solar power are intermittent and the only significant technology to fill these gaps in production are nimble natural gas fueled power plants, unless you think massive hydro projects are a good thing. (No, they are not.)
The largest industrial projects on the planet today are gas wells and processing plants. That's going to be the final nail in our coffin and it doesn't matter how many windmills we build.
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/25/cost-of-solar-power-vs-cost-of-wind-power-coal-nuclear-natural-gas/
December 25th, 2016 by Zachary Shahan
[font size=3]We already published a great article from Nexus Media regarding Lazard’s new report showing the extremely low (and falling) costs of solar power and wind power. However, I’ve been wanting to highlight these awesome new findings since Larmion shared the updated report with us earlier this month, and I want to break out the amazing news in 5 specific ways.
These are 5 messages that I think anyone wanting a better US economy (or a better economy in practically any country), anyone wanting national energy freedom (aka energy independence), anyone wanting to advance the most cost-effective choices for electricity generation, and anyone wanting to make logical energy decisions should know and share with others.[/font]
[center][font size=5]1. Wind & Solar Are Cheaper (Without Subsidies) Than Dirty Energy[/font][/center]
[font size=3]The first point is the very basic fact that new wind power and/or solar power plants are typically cheaper than new coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants — even without any governmental support for solar or wind.
Not only are they typically cheaper — they’re much cheaper in many cases.
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Climbing onto the largest vessel the world has ever seen brings you into a realm where everything is on a bewilderingly vast scale and ambition knows no bounds.
Prelude is a staggering 488m long and the best way to grasp what this means is by comparison with something more familiar.
Four football pitches placed end-to-end would not quite match this vessel's length - and if you could lay the 301m of the Eiffel Tower alongside it, or the 443m of the Empire State Building, they wouldn't do so either.
--more--
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30394137
This isn't the only gas mega project.
I'll say it one more time: A society powered entirely by solar, wind, and other "renewable" energy would look nothing like the society many of us now enjoy.
And if we actually did build such a society there would be little reason to build and maintain multi-gigawatt transmission systems.
I'm not quite at the Live For The Day because the Future is Going to Suck stage but numbers like yours do not sway me.
This thing we now call "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.
Even if it's windmills. Even if they're not losing money. Even if they're not being carted off as scrap twenty years from now.
I'm a hypocrite in a lot of ways -- we have a refrigerator, washing machine, and gas dryer, and we have two cars (My car sits in the drivway most of the time. It's covered with spider webs and lichen.) Our adult kids have moved away and enjoy much the same lifestyle. We're all using vastly more than our fair share of the earth's resources.
At least I've got my computer obsession down to about 20 watts. Back in the old days, with big CRT screens and power hungry processors, I was using a couple hundred watts whenever the computer was on. My wife's laptop was another power hungry beast. I now use a little chromebook thing, and my wife uses a tablet thing. All the lights in our house are compact fluorescents that refuse to die, and LEDs. So maybe I do have something to brag about.
But not much.
... is that nameplate capacities of wind turbines and solar panels are somehow equivalent to the nameplate ratings of fossil fuel plants.
Whenever the industry is confronted with this fact there's all sorts of hand waving about "smart grids" and "smart" appliances and HVDC transmission lines. It's bullshit, and the major beneficiaries of that deception are the natural gas industry and the gas power plant industry. Write a big enough check and Caterpillar will drop a one megawatt continuous rated gas power plant on your driveway. The 163 megawatt power plant at Humboldt Bay is a battery of marine diesel engines.
quote: The Wärtsilä reciprocating engine technology is ideal for providing a reliable backup to intermittent renewable resources, such as wind power resources, which are currently being developed in the region.
So, from your own headline, you've got one third renewable and in ideal conditions, what, two thirds natural gas?
Whoop-dee-do, that's not going to save the world, most especially as the "developing" world continues to develop and the human population continues to increase.
And then there's the mess of high energy agriculture, all those nitrate and ammonia fertilizers made from natural gas, all that phosphorous mined from increasingly difficult sources.
Pumping water around, and desalinization require huge energy inputs too.
I don't write this as an expression of despair, I write it as a challenge.
The future is going to be challenging in many ways.
