Christmas Week of 2010 was the coldest week in recent history in the UK. Maximum temperatures on Shetland Island never got up to the normal minimum, and the average wind speed was 5 mph.
It Scotland had of been dependent on Shetland wind power in 2010, lots of people would have frozen to death. Wind power is not reliable, and needs to have 100% traditional backup capacity. The Guardian claims that Shetland can produce a significant percentage of Scotland’s wind power, but not reliably – which makes it nearly useless.
NPR did a good story on this last month,.
Every day, with the flick of a switch, millions of Americans tap into the electricity grid. It’s a web of power stations, transformers and transmission lines that span the continent, distributing electricity like veins and arteries distribute blood.
Electricity has to keep flowing all the time. Grid operators constantly match what power plants are producing with what people and their TVs, microwaves and air conditioners need. It’s the world’s biggest balancing act.
Predicting The Unpredictable
That’s doable largely because big power plants run almost constantly and produce a predictable amount of electricity.
So what happens when you add in unpredictable sources of electricity, like wind or solar power?
“The operator does not have control of when to turn it on and off,” Moniz says. “It’s a new challenge that we just have to meet, and we’re not doing it at anything like the pace that I think we need.”
That’s the conclusion of a study that Moniz’s group at MIT is issuing Monday. It’s all about how the grid must change to handle the fickle flow of electrons from renewable energy.
Backing Up The Competition
California’s grid, the California Independent System Operator, is trying to sort out how to handle this on-again, off-again source of electricity.
“We have to have a backup,” says Steve Berberich, the grid’s CEO. “There are times when Mother Nature decides to bring in clouds and turn off the wind, but I think everybody in that case still wants to have power.”
In California, most of that backup power comes from plants that burn natural gas; they can switch on and off in a matter of minutes.
But, Berberich says, natural gas plants face some obstacles. Gas plants have to compete against the renewable energy sources they’re supposed to back up.
“They’re not getting as much revenue as they once did because they’re not selling as much power because it’s being displaced by wind and solar energy, which is exactly what we want,” he says. “But we have to find a way to maintain those things.”
Gas plants have to make money to survive. Keeping them idle until a rainy or cloudy day to back up renewables won’t pay their bills.
Coal and nuclear plants — “thermal” plants, as Moniz calls them — are not a good option for backup. It’s costly to start and stop them on short notice.
“Another set of costs is the additional operating costs and maintenance costs, wear and tear on some of these thermal plants that we may be asking to go up and down a lot more than they were planned for,” Moniz says.
Power Grid Must Adapt To Handle Renewable Energy | WBUR & NPR
As wind and solar power are the two least ecologically friendly (read Green) power sources on the planet, disregarding their exorbitant expense, these sources need to be shut down.
As the climate cools and food production wanes, we will need all the CO2 we can get to enhance plant growth. In that vein, gas and coal power plants should be secure and online 24/7, providing the stable reliable energy that the people need.
Of course, we must remember that the powers that be are not on the side of the people but on the side of power and money for themselves and their cronies. What a great time we live in. We have to fight our own politicians to defend our own rights and the integrity of our country.
They could have just asked someone about 10-20 years ago. It simply isn’t doable in the near future. And by that I mean in the next 20-30 years, especially with the nonsensical energy policies we’ve had lately. If simply predicting were the problem, we could overcome it.
The largest problem is the lunatics want to replace coal with this madness. But, these are very different animals. Coal doesn’t turn off and on. Natural gas does. So, they want to tear down the coal plants, and put up pinwheels, but, as pointed out, they also have to erect gas plants as well.
But, this says nothing towards the infrastructure itself. One can’t just willy-nilly put crap up and feed into the grid! The balancing act isn’t just timing but where and how electricity gets fed onto the grid. The type and size of the line are fitted to how much juice is going to running down that line and where it’s going. There’s not enough money, copper, or REE in the world to facilitate how this is occurring. The necessary switches, regulators, capacitors, and monitoring devices alone would grind several industries to a halt.
Snow flurries? Looks more like a freaking blizzard!