![]() ![]() Placing too much wind on the grid is actually a ![]() Too much wind on the grid may violate the Endangered Species Act.Here are some factors that limit wind generation on a hydro grid: It is cheaper to have no wind farms in this pairing and let hydro do the entire job of supplying the needed electricity. ![]() The saved fuel is the extra water that goes over the spillway and is wasted. It should be noted that if hydro power is used to compensate for wind power, there is no compensating cost saving for the saved fuel. This may change if small nuclear plants become available as a low-cost alternative. In Hawaii, however, there appear to be few other choices. The fact that oil is so expensive is the reason that it is seldom used in the continental United States for electricity generation. Oil is such an expensive fuel that anything that reduces fuel consumption is well worth the cost. A simplified cost tradeoff shows that there is indeed a cost advantage to backing up oil generation with windmills. Another favorable factor in Hawaii may also be that the wind generation capacity factor may be higher on these islands. Although natural gas prices without windmills may be competitive today, there have been price fluctuations by as much as a factor of two as recently as a few years ago.Īnother question that might be asked is how does this tradeoff compare when the electricity is generated with oil? In Hawaii, oil is the major fuel for electricity generation. If the price is high, then the use of natural gas is not competitive with other forms of power generation. If the price of natural gas is low, then the worth of the saved fuel does not compensate for the cost of the wind farms. There appears to be no economic justification for windmills when paired with natural gas. The price has since dropped to $4 per million BTU. His strategy, however, depended on gas prices at $9 per million BTU. His attempt at promoting natural gas by pairing it with wind seemed like a good idea and got much television advertisement (his emphasis was on the wind portion of the pairing, as it seemed a more popular idea). Boone Pickens, when he tried to send wind-generated electricity from Texas, which he called the "Saudi Arabia of wind", to California. Transmission line cost may not be directly born by the power provider, so these costs may be hidden from any direct cost comparisons, but ultimately they are still paid for by the consumer or taxpayer.Īn illustration of how the pairing of wind and natural gas has failed recently due to economics was provided by T. For example, a proposed new 12 000-MW high voltage transmission line connecting wind sources in New England would cost $19 billion-$25 billion. A remote wind farm will need expensive transmission lines to deliver the electricity. For example, if we assume a 10-percent electricity loss per 100 miles, a wind farm 500 miles away needs to be double in size. Since the transmission lines from a remote wind farm are likely to be longer, a wind farm may need to be larger to provide the same amount of power as the backup. There are some additional costs that make the comparison even worse: The details of the cost tradeoff are shown at the end of this article. Since wind power is a fuel saver, one of the questions that might be asked is exactly how much fuel is saved, or put another way: What is the economic tradeoff between wind farms and the fuel saved, such as in a natural gas power plant?Ī simplified comparison shows that the worth of the natural gas saved is less than the cost of building and operating a wind farm. Wind power fuel tradeoff with natural gas This limit has already been reached in Europe by countries such as Germany and Denmark. This means that wind can be only 6 percent of the generation (.20 x. ![]() It is estimated that this pairing can account for only 20 percent of the capacity of the grid. This pairing-wind and backup-has limits because of the huge rapid variability of wind that must be compensated for by the backup power source. They must be paired with other generators of equivalent power to compensate for wind variations and for the stability of the electricity grid. The argument that nuclear power also has down times is true, but these refueling and maintenance outages are largely planned during times of low electricity demand (during spring and fall).Īs I mentioned in Fitting Wind onto the Electricity Grid, my recent ANS Nuclear Cafe post, wind turbines by themselves do not add electrical capacity to a grid. There is a very big difference between intermittent sources of electricity, such as wind farms, and baseload sources, such as nuclear power. A typical wind farm would generate electricity about 30 percent of the time, and not necessarily at times when electricity is needed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |