Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 03/02/2010 8:05:07 AM PST by reaganaut1
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At the heart of the battle [between the wind and natural gas industries] is a fight over the vicissitudes of wind itself. The wind industry argues that since it can't control when the wind blows, it shouldn't be held to the same rules that require everyone else to make payments when they fail to deliver promised power. The natural-gas generators say everyone should operate under the same rules, and lament that wind's success is merely coming at the expense of another relatively clean energy source.
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Every evening, grid operator Ercot forecasts how much electricity Texans will need the next day. Wind farms, as well as nuclear, coal and natural-gas-fired plants, report how much power they expect to provide, and their price. Ercot then orders up generation, beginning with the least expensive type—typically wind. Then come nuclear and coal plants, neither of which have been affected much by wind's growth.
The most expensive generators are typically older gas plants, and they are only dispatched in periods of peak demand. If the forecast is windy, more gas plants are left idle.
One grievance: Coal, nuclear and gas operators must pay for their own backup if an operational or maintenance problem prevents them from delivering power as promised. But if wind generators fail to deliver promised power because the wind doesn't blow, the cost of backing up wind power companies is spread among all the generators, state officials say. This puts an unfair burden on nonwind generators, says the gas faction.
"My philosophy is that whoever causes the problem should be responsible for fixing the problem," says Kevin Howell, president of Texas operations with NRG Energy Inc., the state's second-largest power provider. "Wind shouldn't cause problems that other people have to fix."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
global warming / alternative energy ping
Wind and gas generation actually compiment one another well, since gas electrice generators can turn on and off almost instantly (e.g., when the wind dies out or picks up.).
The two should be constructed jointly.
The power company in Holland Michigan backed out of their deal to buy power from Wind farms. It seems that they did a study of their own and found that the wind farms they were looking at only rated a 1 on the 1 to 7 scale they use to measure potential energy produced.
Meanwhile, my local electric company appears to be going ahead with a plan for a 60,000 acre wind farm with between 40 and 70, 4 and 5 hundred foot windmills.
Call me a NIMBY but I don’t want to look at that crap which will be visible over an area of hundreds of square miles. I’d rather have a couple hundred acre power plant (that actually produces power) hidden behind a forest.
This is the first logical thing I’ve heard from NRG.
—and then there is solar—the local utility here in the desert may be forced to use it at thirty cents a kilowatt rather than the eleven we are presently paying-—
The Holland company was forced to make a green choice. It was either wind or a plant that burns wood chips at more than twice the cost of coal.
Google “Austin green choices” for a great example of how a community was scammed by the “green energy” hucksters.
Total cost is a function of total resources consumed, which provides a simple unbiased method to determine how green something is. If the total cost is greater, then it is less green.
Distributed generation like wind requires transmission infrastructure to get the power from where it can be produced to where it is needed. Hydroelectric is no different. Nuclear plants on the other hand, can be built right next door to large population centers where the demand is greatest...right? Just ask the “No Nukes” crowd.
Natural gas is a distributed resource as well and requires transmission infrastructure (pipelines) to get it to the point of demand. Beware of oversimplification of the complexities involved. Every source of energy has it’s hidden costs and reliability factors.
All energy comes from the sun, whether it’s the solar-driven wind cycle or dead dinosaurs that we pump out of shale. It’s always just a matter of conversion from the form it’s in to the form we’d like it to be, whether that’s electricity or go-juice for our V8s...
Subscriptions
GreenChoice subscriptions are again available to the public. Austin Energy customers can subscribe for five years at a GreenChoice charge of 5.7 cents per kWh. This charge will replace Austin Energy’s fuel charge of 3.65 cents per kWh. An average residential customer using about 1,000 kWh per month will pay about $20.50 per month more by subscribing to GreenChoice.
(Note: Austin Energy will automatically upgrade all customers who enrolled after January 2009 to this new five-year subscription.)
Nuclear power does not come from the sun.
It gets worse.
When the electricity was as much as 5X more expensive, and less people signed up, the city board tried to make participation in the program MANDATORY.
Insanity from the left, as always.
Who pays for the gas plant to sit on standby in case the wind power fails to deliver? And who pays for the gas plant to sit idle when the wind blades are spinning?
It should be the wind power producers who pay for the backup, not the gas power producers.
That's what the article is about.
That is not American to have different rules for power comapnies. They all should exist under the same rules.
Any fossil plants used for spinning reserves for the bird and bat-killing windmills that operate at 25% capacity are incurring additional maintenance costs due to the extra wear and tear from bringing a steam plant online in a VERY short amount of time. When does a tungsten light bulb burn out? When you turn it on.
When is the greatest strain on tons of piping and components in a steam plant? When they are going thru temp changes to accommodate the damn windmills. Build more nukes and FORGET this 15th century windmill crap. What an insanity.
References:
Wind Power Study Reveals Hidden Costs and Reliability Issues, July 2008
http://www.ref.org.uk/PressDetails/139
the authors argue that conventional fossil fuel plants would need to be switched on and off as many as 23 times a month to make up the shortfall in supplies. They conclude that this would impair efficiency, and reduce emissions savings.
Wind power does not obviate the need for fossil fuel plants, which will continue to be indispensable. The problem is that wind power volatility requires fossil fuel plant to be switched on and off, which damages them and means that even more plants will have to be built.
Overblown: The Real Cost of Wind Power, April 2008
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=842
European experience: the cost is going to be huge, no companies will plunge into it without massive government subsidies, and should the turbines actually be built, power reliability will almost certainly take a nosedive.
Renewable energy reality check, May 2008, case study of installing windmills and solar panels in Ohio.
http://www.buckeyepower.com/cl/index.asp?getPage=622&issueid=44
“. . . the cost of producing electricity was high: 80 cents per kilowatthour (kWh) for the PV project, and 74 cents per kWh for the wind turbine. Compare this to 8-10 cents per kWh for most residential electricity sold by electric Cooperatives in Ohio.”
I have long suspected that renewables are loading costs on the rest of the grid. I do not think that the transmission capacity is factored in the wind rates. This article indicates that unreliability costs are pushed on the rest of the grid. Wind power rates should reflect the full cost of delivering the power including transmission and backup capacity. If there was honest capital budgeting, alternatives involving wind power and no wind power would be compared. Of course, the left falls back on the full pollution costs of conventional energy. The full pollution costs are highly subjective allowing any renewable project to pass an economic test. Renewable power causes pollution in other parts of the grid by requiring frequent startup/shutdown of backup capacity.
No, but the Sun is Nuclear Powered.
The BIG BANG keeps on banging.
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