Public gasps at Lake Michigan wind farm images

Oceana Herald Journal ^ | 12/16/09 | John Cavanagh

[Lakeshark]

It's implicit in the Denmark discussion. They supposedly get 18% of their energy from wind, but as the article said, they haven't closed any power plants, and have to run the old ones all the time in order to insure even power distribution.

So why are they doing this? Ans: Cause it makes them feel better and intellectually superior typical lib reasoning.

[Lakeshark]

Burp. :-)

[PLMerite]

“The word backup does not occur in that list of complaints.”

Sporadic power sources will not be viable until every end user has a UPS system capable of picking up the slack during direct-generation shortfalls.

That means big ass batteries.

[DungeonMaster]

Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity.

This is not a true statment. I can't fight a false statement if that's what you've decided to believe.

[Lakeshark]

From the article: Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity.

Sorry, you're the one who is a believer. You're not dealing with the fact that sometimes (much more often than we'd like) the wind does not turn the turbine because it's not blowing. If they find a way to store the power, then the game changes, but until then, please get off your horse. It doesn't work, it doesn't help. It just makes the wind believers feel good for their imagined superiority and morality.

[DungeonMaster]

It just makes the wind believers feel good for their imagined superiority and morality.

It's clear who is feeling superior, I never once got personal.

[Lakeshark]

It wasn’t personal to you, but it was a diss of wind believers who won’t deal with the very real and serious problems of the technology. Wind power is fine for some apllications, great for farms that need to pump water, or for people who have no grid and can handle intermittent power. It’s simply not ready to be a player en masse and all the wishing or hoping or labelling it as free and clean isn’t going to make the turbines generate power when the wind isn’t blowing.

[Repeal The 17th]

During periods of low demand, excess power is used to pump water
from Lake Sinclair upstream into Lake Oconee;
during periods of high demand, water from Lake Oconee turns generators
as it gravity flows back into Lake Sinclair.

This has been going on for while ~ thirty years or so ~ on the Oconee River.

[lonestar]

But Teddy didn’t want windmills out his window.

[Repeal The 17th]

some wiki info re pumped storage:
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
-
The topic of electrical power generation has lots of things to consider
The biggest problem is there is no viable technology
for storage of electricity.
Base load vs. peak load is just one of the interesting topics.
The base load on a grid is mostly maintained by steam generating plants
(all of the nuclear plants and most of the fossil fuel plants
that take several days to come up to efficient operating conditions).
The peak loads on that grid must be provided for by some other type of plant
because the demands are variable and instantaneous
(typically these are natural gas turbines, but ‘pumped storage’
and once-through hydro plants, although both are small contributors,
also fit into this niche).

So in this line of thinking, we have to consider
where do things like wind and solar fit into this mix?
Sure they can contribute to satisfy the overall demand,
but their output is unreliable either for handling the base load or the peak load
so some other generating capacity has to maintained on constant standby
to handle the demand during the windless periods and the sunless periods.

[DungeonMaster]

Very good post completely devoid of misinformation or prejudice.

[uglybiker]

No windmills. I want floating nuke plants.

Lots of 'em.

[DungeonMaster]

It wasn’t personal to you, but it was a diss of wind believers who won’t deal with the very real and serious problems of the technology.

It seemed personal. It's fine for you to have problems with wind energy but going personal isn't.

I understand how the grid works and I realize that there are spinning reserves waiting to go on line. I also understand that demand rises and falls in a very predictable way every day and this all has to be managed to within about 1 percent supply exactly matching demand on the grid at all times. But it is not correct to think that no other resource is saved when wind power is on the grid. I have no doubt at all that Denmark could screw up their use of wind energy or a soup sandwitch for that matter. I loathe Countries where Homeschooling is illegal. But here in Iowa, we have 3,000 mw of wind power which produce about 7,000,000 mhwr of power in a year. That power goes to the grid and something else is curtailed. I agree that said curtailment is not 100 percent.