For Wind Power and Comedy, it's All About...Timing

[wtmusic]

The Texas grid was clearly in trouble last Tuesday when operators declared a Level 1 Emergency as reserve electricity levels dropped below 2.3GW.

Where was Texas's 9.3GW of nameplate wind capacity? Out to lunch, as the graph below shows. Note that load (green) uses scale on left, wind output (blue) uses scale on right. If the two were proportional, the wind contribution would appear roughly 10x smaller.



"Note how wind power is strongly anticorrelated with the afternoon demand peak! Wind power "reliably fails" whenever electricity is most needed.

The American Wind Energy Association is here to give us their "spin" on the situation:

"Wind helps meet new Texas record for electricity demand

Commented American Wind Energy Association Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin, "At a time when the extreme heat prevailing in Texas is pushing the utility system close to its limits, wind generation is making a valuable and much-needed contribution to system reliability."

At the risk of revisiting the obvious, these were the operating power levels of Texas' four nuclear power reactors over the same week, according to the NRC:



http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/texas-electric-grid-declares-level-1.html

[hunter]

1. Happy news for the makers of gas turbine power plants...

...and the natural gas industry.

Wind is good for their businesses.

[XemaSab]

2. They can always use pumped hydro

to store wind energy. :shrug:

[pscot]

5. That assumes the availability of large volumes of water

and a hill to pump it up. Texas being flat and dry... :shrug:

[XemaSab]

6. Yeah, my comment was ironic

:P

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Solar nicely balances wind in this regard

As people love to point out, PV (without some sort of storage) tends to produce the most electricity at noon, and very little at night. (i.e. Solar tends to be at its peak when wind is at its nadir and vice versa.)

[txlibdem]

4. Wind, Solar, Geothermal Power, Tidal and Wave Power, and Efficiency improvements

We need them all. When I look at that chart I see a wind power source that literally *screams* for renewable energy storage. With a 24 hour storage, the wind would have varied from 4 GW to 2.2 GW during those days.

Our nation needs to grow up and make the tough decisions, I'm sorry if that steps on any corporate toes. We need to attack our energy crisis on three fronts all at the same time.

Front #1:
We need to replace all of our existing nuclear power plants with Thorium Cycle nuclear plants that are mass produced, like the LFTR (therefore cost competitive with renewable energy, and passively safe -- the laws of physics prevent a meltdown). After all the old nuclear plants are gone then we need to step up production of these till we are getting 30% of our energy from Thorium nuclear power plants.

Front #2:
We need an effort to build renewable anywhere and everywhere possible, with the requirement that energy storage is designed into the big picture. With the exception of Geothermal Power which needs no energy storage. We need to focus our efforts on building where we'd get the most benefit:
1. More solar in the desert southwest, less solar in New Jersey where there are more cloudy days and less powerful sun to start with.
1.a. Not that a homeowner in NJ shouldn't buy their own solar panels -- every little bit helps
2. More wind on the Texas coast, along a line that stretches from West Texas to Canada, and offshore wind on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

Front #3:
Efficiency improvements. There is enough info to make a book out of this alone but here are some biggies:
1. Solar process heat (Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tt7RG3UR4c&feature=player_embedded ) If you doubt the power of solar.
2. Electric vehicles
3. LED Lighting
4. Improved building practices such as LEED, PNC SmartHome, and PassiveHouse

If we fight this fight with every available ounce of our energy, we will win against the evil interests of the status quo: Coal, Oil, Natural Gas.

PS, a note about Solar process heat: Restaurants need hot water to sanitize their dishes and utensils, why hot get it from solar. Big food companies like soup makers or beverage packagers need to wash the cans or bottles with near-boiling water, why not get that heat from solar.

[diane in sf]

7. Texas obviously needs more solar in their balance--it provides during those peak demand hours

in the afternoon.

[txlibdem]

8. The drooling over wind profits in TX has completely overshadowed the solar potential

But let's face it, the concept of reducing fossil fuels consumption really doesn't resonate here. Solar has the potential to provide 100% of our total energy needs.