Climate Change and the Grid -

Efforts to enact legislation that would limit carbon emissions have seemingly stalled. So it would appear that new standards to make the transmission wires more amenable to transporting green electrons are untimely. But those who are in charge of ensuring the dependency of the electric grid say that such measures are vital.

While there may be 229,000 MW of wind capacity and 20,000 MW of solar capacity scheduled to come on line, we must remember that is only 1.65 million MWH per day and 72,000 MWH per day respectively rather than the roughly 6 million MWH per day to be expected from fossil- or nuclear-power plants of the same nameplate rating.  Without energy storage adequate to make up for the variation in output during a 24 hour day, the long transmission lines from wind farms located in the most productive wind regions to the load would have to be capable of handling the 229,000 MWs of peak output rather than the 68,760 MWs of average output.  In addition, there would have to be a lot of spinning reserve kept on line to stabilize the power due to significant variation due to gusts and lulls.  I also noticed on charts showing wind power versus time-of-day in Texas, much of the wind power seems to be available during the night hours and little during daylight so, it does nothing for reducing the use of fossil-fuel power for peaking operation.  This inappropriate timing means that large, highly efficient plants meant for base load have to turn down when the wind power comes on, causing their overall average heat rate to increase--burning more fuel per MWH produced.  These plants cannot just shutdown for 5 or 6 hours every night.  The gas turbine combined cycle plants that can do so, end up with very much increased maintenance due to thermal cycling--plus they end up wasting a lot of BTUs of fuel starting up or running at decreased load.

PV solar power facilities can at least be installed in a distributed power manner, close to or at their loads.  They also tend to produce their peak power during the middle of the day, closer to the time it is most needed.  Unfortunately the true peak usage hits after the sun has already passed its zenith so the power available from PV is not exactly matched to when it is needed most.

Seems to me the ratio of wind vs solar going in should be reversed.  There should be much more solar being installed in a distributed fashion to peak shave.  At least that is much more useful than installing hundreds of thousands of MW of wind power that is available when least needed and not available when most needed.

All-in-all, it seems that without having developed economically feasible, massive energy storage, neither wind- nor solar-power are truly ready for prime time. But we are wasting money throwing it at these grossly expensive (on a $/KWH basis) facilities removing from the capital pool monies that can be devoted to improving energy efficiency technology.  At the same time, Congress and the Administration are busy trying to pass laws or write regulations to force us to throw money into the not-ready-for-prime-time technologies while scaring fossil and nuclear designers away from developing new technologies to improve efficiency.

Not very smart.