India threatens Wind farms with fines. They must accurately predict the wind .....

JoNova ^ | July 18th, 2013 | Joanne

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Full Title:

India threatens Wind farms with fines. They must accurately predict the wind a day in advance or else!

What the Nanny-State Goddess Giveth…

The intermittent power of wind towers plays havoc with electricity grids. Power black outs in India are so bad, they cut off the supply to 600 million or so people for two days last year. To make the grid more stable, an official somewhere decided it would help to have at least one day’s warning of how much electricity will flow from those towers.  (Why not two days I say?)

“A directive took effect this week ordering wind farms with a capacity of 10 megawatts or more to forecast their generation in 15-minute blocks for the following day. “

To put some perspective on this, here is what 7000 wind turbines across Northern Europe (between the North sea, the Baltic Sea and the Austrian-Swiss border) produced in 2004. You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right?

Percentage of peak grid power supplied by 7000 wind turbines in Northern Europe in 2004

Sources: German Eon Netz (E.ON) Wind Report 2005, Windenergy  and  WiseEnergy.org  (Wind Energy Facts and Fiction: A Half Truth is a Whole Lie p 7)

[Bloomberg]  Wind Forecast Order Jeopardizes Industry, Tata Power Says

By Natalie Obiko Pearson – Jul 16, 2013 2:49 AM ET

India’s move to stabilize its power grid by asking wind farms to accurately predict their output a day in advance or face fines will deepen the slowdown in Asia’s second-biggest wind market, Tata Power Co. (TPWR) said.

A directive took effect this week ordering wind farms with a capacity of 10 megawatts or more to forecast their generation in 15-minute blocks for the following day. Missing estimates by more than 30 percent will incur penalties. “Forecasting at 15-minute intervals is very challenging,” and could cost a 100-megawatt farm an estimated 250 million rupees ($4.2 million) a year, Tata Power said in an e-mailed response to questions. “Developers will see this as a further handicap” and penalties will “jeopardize” the industry’s growth, the nation’s second-biggest developer said.

Someone in power in India does not like wind turbines.

h/t John Droz (graph) and Willie (news)

The short killer summary: The Skeptics Handbook. The most deadly point: The Missing Hot Spot.

[sagar]

Put all those politicians in front of the turbine and the wind(in the form of hot air) should be very predictable.

[Little Pig]

Wind power is an energy sink, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The turbines are a net energy negative, since each turbine cannot produce, over its lifetime, even as much energy as it took to produce the thing. Further, wind *require* additional infrastructure to mitigate the problem the official here calls out: that wind is not a steady power source. These, and other problems, also require that wind receive subsidies in order to remain “competitive” in the energy marketplace, and those subsidies are easily translatable into energy as well (the energy the subsidy could have purchased and/or the energy of the people who generated the wealth in the first place).

[FatherofFive]

The turbines are a net energy negative, since each turbine cannot produce, over its lifetime, even as much energy as it took to produce the thing.

Do you have a link for that?

[Ditto]

They must accurately predict the wind a day in advance or else!

I worked in the energy industry for over 40 years, and that is exactly what every other generation plant has to do. You bid to the grid and guarantee to supply a certain amount of MW at specific times during the day. Then the grid operator guarantees you to pay your bid price for it, if they use it all, and if they don't, they will pay something less for what they don't use.

But if for some reason you can't deliver the amout of electricity that you bid and the operator has to scramble to find other sources, you get very severe penalties. It's called "Bid Ahead". It's the way it works, and it works pretty well. Everyone is on their toes.

But of course, the Sainted 'Alternative Energy' generators -- Wind and Solar scam outfits) are immune to that market discipline. They don't have to bid. The grid operator is required by law to accept every kWh of electricity they can eek out, even at the expense of the grid operator paying higher rates than what they had already contraced with conventional plants and having to pay them to produce less and not more.

Any source that can't be reasonably predicted the day before or can't be asked for (dispatched) more in the event of an emergency should not be part of the grid.

[G Larry]

Here instead of insetting that utilities accurately forecast clouds for solar farms and wind for wind farms, they simply mandate that utilities manipulate their bookkeeping and assign the necessary amounts of coal generated electricity to the “renewable” column, to make up the legislated 15% Requirement.

True Fact!!!

[Oldexpat]

The grid in India has awful voltage and Hz stability. It is hard to get things to sync when they are running at different speeds. Normally the Indian grid runs slow in speed..like 48 Hz instead of 50 Hz.

[Little Pig]

Trying to find the article that laid it out. Basically, what they did was take the actual efficiency of an average turbine, which is about 15% of rated, then calculated the amount of energy that it would have generated total over it’s lifespan (about 5 years). Then they total up all the energy it takes to produce the various components of the turbine, transportation, and construction on-site, plus maintenance. The amount of energy it takes to mine all the materials, refine everything, process it and turn out finished components, plus assembly, and the various on-site maintenance cycles (truck fuel, parts, etc), ends up being more than the turbine is capable of producing in its 5-year life.

It might be “cheating” a bit to include the whole long-tail supply and maintenance chain, and some turbines do last longer than 5 years, but on average, it looks like they’re a negative compared to fixed generation plants like coal, gas, and especially nuclear.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Someone in power in India does not like wind turbines.

Maybe that's because, unlike in the U.S., unreliable power generation in India means continued abject poverty and squalor for tens of millions.