[ RadSafe ] For the LOBA man, sizing up the Nuclear Power's competition

[Brennan, Mike (DOH)]

I must be missing something.  The authors seem to be ignoring the well
developed power grid that stretches across North America like a fishnet
stocking.  It almost sounds as if they believe that electricity from
wind is different from electricity form other sources, and needs to be
kept separate to maintain its purity.

I don't know of anyone who says that wind can't generate power, or that
the wind blows differently in different places.  The criticisms I've
heard about wind are (1) the wind speed constantly changes, meaning the
output of any given generator constantly changes, (2) the amount of
resources per installed unit of generating capacity is high in
comparison to many other sources, (3) most people are not pleased with
the way they look, (4) they kill the crap out of birds that like to sit
on high things and (5) there appears to be non-trivial QA issues in
their construction, leading to failures that can cost more to fix than
the original construction.  

If I were being cynical, I'd say that the authors ignored the
outstanding problems with wind in order to trumpet a solution that was
in place before they were born. 

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of ROY HERREN
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 9:03 PM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: [ RadSafe ] For the LOBA man, sizing up the Nuclear Power's
competition


 Public release date: 21-Nov-2007

Contact: Stephanie Kenitzer
kenitzer at ametsoc.org
425-432-2192
American Meteorological Society 
  The power of multiples: Connecting wind farms can make a more reliable
- and cheaper - power source    Wind power, long considered to be as
fickle as wind itself, can be groomed to become a steady, dependable
source of electricity and delivered at a lower cost than at present,
according to scientists at Stanford University. 
  The key is connecting wind farms throughout a given geographic area
with transmission lines, thus combining the electric outputs of the
farms into one powerful energy source. The findings are published in the
November issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of
Applied Meteorology and Climatology. 
  Wind is the world's fastest growing electric energy source, according
to the study's authors, Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson. However,
because wind is intermittent, it is not used to supply baseload electric
power today. Baseload power is the amount of steady and reliable
electric power that is constantly being produced, typically by power
plants, regardless of the electricity demand. But interconnecting wind
farms with a transmission grid reduces the power swings caused by wind
variability and makes a significant portion of it just as consistent a
power source as a coal power plant. 
  "This study implies that, if interconnected wind is used on a large
scale, a third or more of its energy can be used for reliable electric
power, and the remaining intermittent portion can be used for
transportation, allowing wind to solve energy, climate and air pollution
problems simultaneously," said Archer, the study's lead author and a
consulting assistant professor in Stanford's Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering and research associate in the Department of
Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution. 
  It's a bit like having a bunch of hamsters generating your power, each
in a separate cage with a treadmill. At any given time, some hamsters
will be sleeping or eating and some will be running on their treadmill.
If you have only one hamster, the treadmill is either turning or it
isn't, so the power's either on or off. With two hamsters, the odds are
better that one will be on a treadmill at any given point in time and
your chances of running, say, your blender, go up. Get enough hamsters
together and the odds are pretty good that at least a few will always be
on the treadmill, cranking out the kilowatts. 
  The combined output of all the hamsters will vary, depending on how
many are on treadmills at any one time, but there will be a certain
level of power that is always being generated, even as different
hamsters hop on or off their individual treadmills. That's the reliable
baseload power.
  The connected wind farms would operate the same way. 
  "The idea is that, while wind speed could be calm at a given location,
it could be gusty at others. By linking these locations together we can
smooth out the differences and substantially improve the overall
performance," Archer said.
  As one might expect, not all locations make sense for wind farms. Only
locations with strong winds are economically competitive. In their
study, Archer and Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at Stanford, evaluated 19 sites in the Midwestern United
States, with annual average wind speeds greater than 6.9 meters per
second at a height of 80 meters above ground, the hub height of modern
wind turbines. Modern turbines are 80-100 meters high, approximately the
height of a 30-story building, and their blades are 70 meters long or
more. 
  The researchers used hourly wind data, collected and
quality-controlled by the National Weather Service, for the entire year
of 2000 from the 19 sites in the Midwestern United States. They found
that an average of 33 percent and a maximum of 47 percent of
yearly-averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as
reliable, baseload electric power. These percentages would hold true for
any array of 10 or more wind farms, provided it met the minimum wind
speed and turbine height criteria used in the study.
  Another benefit of connecting multiple wind farms is reducing the
total distance that all the power has to travel from the multiple points
of origin to the destination point. Interconnecting multiple wind farms
to a common point and then connecting that point to a far-away city
reduces the cost of transmission. 
  It's the same as having lots of streams and creeks join together to
form a river that flows out to sea, rather than having each creek flow
all the way to the coast by carving out its own little channel.
  Another type of cost saving also results when the power combines to
flow in a single transmission line. Explains Archer: Suppose a power
company wanted to bring power from several independent farms-each with a
maximum capacity of, say, 1,500 kilowatts (kW) -from the Midwest to
California. Each farm would need a short transmission line of 1,500 kW
brought to a common point in the Midwest. Then they would need a larger
transmission line between the common point and California-typically with
a total capacity of 1,500 kW multiplied by the number of independent
farms connected. 
  However, with geographically dispersed farms, it is unlikely that they
would simultaneously be experiencing strong enough winds to each produce
their 1,500kW maximum output at the same time. Thus, the capacity of the
long-distance transmission line could be reduced significantly with only
a small loss in overall delivered power.
  The more wind farms connected to the common point in the Midwest, the
greater the reduction in long-distance transmission capacity that is
possible. 
  "Due to the high cost of long-distance transmission, a 20 percent
reduction in transmission capacity with little delivered power loss
would notably reduce the cost of wind energy," added Archer, who
calculated the decrease in delivered power to be only about 1.6 percent.

  With only one farm, a 20 percent reduction in long-distance
transmission capacity would decrease delivered power by 9.8 percent-not
a 20 percent reduction, because the farm is not producing its maximum
possible output all the time. 
  Archer said that if the United States and other countries each started
to organize the siting and interconnection of new wind farms based on a
master plan, the power supply could be smoothed out and transmission
requirements could be reduced, decreasing the cost of wind energy. This
could result in the large-scale market penetration of wind
energy-already the most inexpensive clean renewable electric power
source-which could contribute significantly to an eventual solution to
global warming, as well as reducing deaths from urban air pollution.
    ###
  The American Meteorological Society (www.ametsoc.org) is the nation's
leading professional organization for those involved in the atmospheric
and related sciences. Founded in 1919, the AMS has more 11,000
international members, organizes nearly a dozen scientific conferences
annually, and publishes nine peer-reviewed journals.
  
  
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