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To: Paine in the Neck

Peak is one thing. The complete duty cycle is quite another. I’ll bet that overall the average number of MWe generated is less than 20% of nameplate capacity.

Plus, peak production is when the wind conditions are optimal. How often do we suppose those peaks line up with demand? In fossil and nuke plants you can ramp up production for predictable peak demand times. Plants can be in ‘spinning reserve’ ready to go online when dispatched to accommodate demand. Gas turbine plants can be quickly started when there are frequency drops due to trips or unexpected outages.

The point is the utility can throw a switch and bring up a power plant on line with a reasonable expectation that it will respond. You can’t just whistle up a few thousand MWe of wind.


13 posted on 06/25/2014 8:33:44 AM PDT by SargeK
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To: SargeK

Hydro-Electric damns with turbines are steady output and dependable. Greens don’t like them due to the damns changing streams.

Atomic power is steady as well — greens don’t like them.

Wind and Solar are landscape intensive and very irregular in output and very subject to damage.

The average person does not understand that the grid can’t “store” power and fluctuating generation is more of a problem rather than a resource. A coal fired or nuc plant does not spin up in ten minutes as output of wind generated power drops. There aren’t batteries in the grid the size of Godzilla every block or two.


14 posted on 06/25/2014 8:48:41 AM PDT by KC Burke (Gowdy for Supreme Court)
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