One knowledgeable FReeper once told me that when a wind plant suddenly goes online, a traditional power plant goes to “hot spinning standby”, or in other words, kept running but generating nothing, because the traditional plant can’t just be switched off and allowed to cool down. So while the pretty wind turbines spin, the coal-fired turbines spin also, just waiting for the wind to stop. This seriously detracts from the energy savings.
To a certain extent this is true. Naturally the wind tends to be blowing always somewhere over a large geographic area AND, predicting this to some extent to allow Utilities to turn off this spare capacity is really what the article is about.
Concurrently the question must be raised - what happens if the report is wrong? It can be wrong on the up or downside. Naturally a black out is worse than wasted electricity, but it would be a shame to waste the electricity.
To solve this problem a utility needs a back-up plan. This is why a more interactive grid is necessary.
Imagine if to avoid a power surge, rather than having gas turbines on rolling stand-by, that a power company could just temporarily switch off the heat element in 1 million dryers, or the pump in dishwahers?
Why not also use excess wind to run a refrigerator (even if it had not fully reached the programmed switch-on temperature)? A fridge is just a battery to store cold air anyway. You don’t always wait to charge your mobile until it is empty, why always wait to charge the fridge? Why not cool it down when the energy is cheapest and most available?
To do this will require a box that communicates with your appliances and communicates with a utility (generally about price). The is already being worked on in several places. In the US the most prominent is the PNNL GridWise program.
Anyone who claims to be a conservative who does not believe America is clever enough to be energy independent (without drilling) is not a real conservative and is not a real patriot.