wind power???

[TomSeller]

Coal plants and some large LG plants can take hours to spool up or down, so they do better with more constant loads. Smaller, newer NG turbine driven plants are better at quick response, but not too many of them yet in the US.

paul

Makes sense, I would bet that modernizations of old plants and any new plants would be built to respond quicker to spooling up and down. So use the green sources when they are available and the traditional sources when they are not.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Redneck, Thanks again. I was trying not to bother you with a personal requirement for info. I was originally thinking I could make a table or graph of your temperatues, but could not. So, and apologies again, can you please give me a rough guide of your usual summer temps. My neighbour is currently working in London, and I am just trying to keep up to scratch on info that he will use and interpret for us both. He may well want to discuss installation of a bigger PV set up at some stage.

 

[OldMcDonald]

The only reason Denmark exports power is because a vast majority of wind production in Denmark is achieved at night when the wind is blowing and it's not needed.

But it is needed - somewhere. That is precisely the point with wind. It produces during the night when demand is low and the surplus can be used in many ways, one of which I have already pointed out to you. Additionally of course, the wind blows during the day and the power is perhaps then used quite locally.

I do not know what the requirements are in the US, or even whether it is a national thing, but in Britain it is necessary for the National Grid which is an HVAC network (see the links in ##64 and 65 if you want info on HVAC and HVDC) that must be kept at 50Hertz +/- 0.5Hz. To do this it has always needed what is known as spinning reserve power generating capacity (excess power stations) - long before renewables came on the scene. There is also another back-up source known as Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR) and these tend to be privately owned diesel generators (large ones) with contracts to supply power to the grid when required.

A further possibility in Britain is HVDC power from offshore wind in the North and West, and send this power to the heavily populated SE of England, in a similar way to the proposed Iowa HVDC line.

I repeat, windpower does work - and so does solar. Not all the time, but neither do ppower station generators. There was a considerable problem a couple of weeks back with a fire in a power station generator that had not been working since April. It will now be off for much longer.

 

[Country Geek]

Fascinating thread I just found it and read the whole thing.

I recently looked into PV solar with net metering because there was a push to get it installed in my community. The main reasons I didn't take the plunge were that 1. I'd need to replace my roof since its 15 years old and it makes no sense to put a 25 year solar system on a roof with less than 10 years of life left and 2. I decided to spend the upgrade money on a geothermal HVAC system instead.

But one thing that was apparent was how the legacy power company tries to look like they are cooperating with net metering while really not. Around here Duke Energy does not pay for the net metered power but you build up credits that go toward your power bills in months when you need excess. But here's the kicker: On May 31 of every year, all unused credits are wiped out. Just in time for the southern air conditioning season!

 

[DarkBlack]

The link shows cost of various sources of energy.
Google DC power from Midwest to East
Big Power Line Project Proposed To Transport Iowa Wind Energy - Farm Progress

Unless I'm reading it wrong, I still don't see, even in that link, where it talks about a large excess of wind power.
All I could find was theorized numbers based on if they were to spend billions $ on more windmills. That isn't what you meant, is it?

 

[OldMcDonald]

DarkBlack, I tend to agree with you that other posters have not directly answered your specific questions. Maybe if you approach it from a different angle - make a statement perhaps, or give your general views, you might have better luck. I suspect, perhaps wrongly, that like Axe Man, you are not convinced that renewables are all that they are cracked up to be. Again, I agree with you. Those selling the technology tell the same lies as all salespeople. That does not make the technology wrong, but it does annoy people who are not convinced of the need to replace fossil fuels, and I understand why it annoys them. Nobody likes liars, and we have seen a few in our lifetimes.

 

[KennyG]

Makes sense, I would bet that modernizations of old plants and any new plants would be built to respond quicker to spooling up and down. So use the green sources when they are available and the traditional sources when they are not.

The mix of renewables and traditional sources is the big problem the power industry is struggling with. Because we don't have a cost effective way to store power, renewables have to be used when they are available. Wind and solar typically have capacity factors of 20 to 30% which means that you need a lot of back up sources that may have to be shut down when the renewables are available. If those sources have large capital costs or can't be quickly ramped up or down it's a problem. Almost any plant can be designed to rapidly cycle but it does hurt the economics. The best example now is nuclear plants. They can be designed to cycle but, because of the high capital costs, need to operate most of the time. The lowest cost are simple cycle gas turbines but their efficiency is not so good. Most of the new gas plants are combined cycle which are very efficient but the cost is much higher and they are more complex to cycle rapidly.

Because of the wind/solar subsidies, they sometimes force the electricity wholesale cost to be negative, so other plants have to pay to get rid of their power, or else shut down. The other problem with renewables is that they require transmission lines just like other plants but only utilize them at an average of 20 or 30%. This cost goes into the distribution costs and not into the renewable energy cost.

The bottom line is that we are going to see more and more renewables but they are straining the traditional generation and distribution systems, which the renewables also need to survive. Something is going to have to be done to keep the base load reliable resources in the system or we will start seeing blackouts when the renewables are not available.

 

[Redneck in training]

If you spread in example wind generators over large area the energy production will be very predictable. Only problem is that there might not be enough load near by. To make our energy grid more afficient (not only because of wind but in general) we need long distance power transmission lines such DC. The DC concept is not new. There are DC lines in operation for over 50 years.

 

[Redneck in training]

Redneck, Thanks again. I was trying not to bother you with a personal requirement for info. I was originally thinking I could make a table or graph of your temperatues, but could not. So, and apologies again, can you please give me a rough guide of your usual summer temps. My neighbour is currently working in London, and I am just trying to keep up to scratch on info that he will use and interpret for us both. He may well want to discuss installation of a bigger PV set up at some stage.

I tried to attach the Excel file but TBN doesn't like it. You can get the data from the links I put in my post. Click the link. Click "gear" symbol on the top of the screen to convert Imperial units to SI. Scroll the screen down to see the charts, click on table Tab, click Download, copy the table and paste it to Word, save it as txt file. Open it in Excel and check the "coma" delimited box when asked. Click Finish. Indianola and Osceola have data years back, my WS was installed in December 2013 so it has only 8 month of data o the web.

 

[Jim Nelson]

DarkBlack, I tend to agree with you that other posters have not directly answered your specific questions. Maybe if you approach it from a different angle - make a statement perhaps, or give your general views, you might have better luck. I suspect, perhaps wrongly, that like Axe Man, you are not convinced that renewables are all that they are cracked up to be. Again, I agree with you. Those selling the technology tell the same lies as all salespeople. That does not make the technology wrong, but it does annoy people who are not convinced of the need to replace fossil fuels, and I understand why it annoys them. Nobody likes liars, and we have seen a few in our lifetimes.

This is very true at least for me. In the U.S.A. the biggest proponent of this is also the biggest phony who has used this to add to his fortune and removed any credibility from that side of the argument. The greenies, as they are called, need better spokes people and more honesty.Blaming people and their lifestyles will not sell an idea especially when we can look at recent history and see the improvement in places like California where if anything people should be given credit for cleaning up as well as they have .
As I remember in the history of electricity in the U.S. Edison had some competition from a man named Tesla,I believe, who was pushing for d.c. way back then so it's not an entirely new idea.