Where it all comes from and what it means..
I’ve pulled together some numbers from U.S. Department of Energy concerning electrical production.
It doesn’t tell the whole story, but I’ll try to fill in the blanks:
I’m going to assume that the numbers are more or less accurate, as I have no other data to work with.
What does it all mean?
If you look at the far right column, bottom row, it shows that for every 1 MW of generation capacity installed in natural gas plants, you will end up getting about 2.1 MW hours of electricity.
With wind power, one should expect to generate 2.6 MW hours for every MW of generation capacity installed.
From the raw numbers, one would expect that wind power is more useful than natural gas installations.
But this is where practicality of operation and the numbers diverge.
Many natural gas installations are what the industry calls “Peaker Plants”
These are comparatively small installations that only come on line for short periods of time when electrical demand is excessively high or the rate of electrical generation is expected to drop due to maintenance necessity or equipment failure.
So how can wind come into the mix?
There are several possibilities for implementing wind, but all of them have drawbacks which will need to be addressed and can be overcome in various degrees.
Base-line shaving:
The electrical “base-line” is the concept that a fixed amount of electrical energy will be necessary at all times. By conserving electricity, we can lower the baseline amount needed, but there is a fly in that ointment:
This would require that electrical generation installations would be operating at lower power levels. While this approach has good points, it also has drawbacks.
Power plants generally operate more efficiently at higher power levels. If we reduce consumption of electricity below the operational efficiency range, we’ll actually be paying more to generate a given amount of energy than if we would have kept consumption higher and used it for something productive.
Shifting of electrical peaking generation from natural gas to wind:
While it sounds workable, the wind doesn’t blow in a given location 24 hours a day.
This is where efficiency of scale comes in.
If hundreds or thousands of wind turbines were all placed into service in a small geographic area, we would generate a lot of power if the wind was blowing. This has two possible drawbacks:
Example 1:
Earlier this year, so much wind power was being generated in Oregon that hydroelectric plants had to reduce their generation levels by bypassing their generators. This caused water flow rates to exceed the requirements mandated by the EPA, as they applied to fish spawning necessities. It also caused electrical surges on the grid, which could also lead to other complications.
Example 2:
Not too long ago a wind farm in Texas had a drastic power generation drop due to a reduction in available wind. We were quite fortunate that conventional power plants were capable for coming on line quickly to make up for the dramatic drop in generation, but even this has costs.
To bring conventional power plants on line quickly, corners can only be cut at the expense of having to pay spot market rates for fuel, which can be much higher than planned for, and by exceeding designed equipment operational levels, which reduce the expected lifespan of equipment and increases necessary maintenance.
Some of these problems can be overcome by spreading wind generation over larger areas, minimizing the possibility of adverse operating conditions and increasing the possibility of distributing power to higher demand regions.
To make a long story short:
Wind power (like all forms of electrical generation) has good points and bad points. Only through prudent system design, hardware application, acceptance of system limitations and realistic customer expectations can we hope to achieve energy independence.
It doesn’t tell the whole story, but I’ll try to fill in the blanks:
I’m going to assume that the numbers are more or less accurate, as I have no other data to work with.
What does it all mean?
If you look at the far right column, bottom row, it shows that for every 1 MW of generation capacity installed in natural gas plants, you will end up getting about 2.1 MW hours of electricity.
With wind power, one should expect to generate 2.6 MW hours for every MW of generation capacity installed.
From the raw numbers, one would expect that wind power is more useful than natural gas installations.
But this is where practicality of operation and the numbers diverge.
Many natural gas installations are what the industry calls “Peaker Plants”
These are comparatively small installations that only come on line for short periods of time when electrical demand is excessively high or the rate of electrical generation is expected to drop due to maintenance necessity or equipment failure.
So how can wind come into the mix?
There are several possibilities for implementing wind, but all of them have drawbacks which will need to be addressed and can be overcome in various degrees.
Base-line shaving:
The electrical “base-line” is the concept that a fixed amount of electrical energy will be necessary at all times. By conserving electricity, we can lower the baseline amount needed, but there is a fly in that ointment:
This would require that electrical generation installations would be operating at lower power levels. While this approach has good points, it also has drawbacks.
Power plants generally operate more efficiently at higher power levels. If we reduce consumption of electricity below the operational efficiency range, we’ll actually be paying more to generate a given amount of energy than if we would have kept consumption higher and used it for something productive.
Shifting of electrical peaking generation from natural gas to wind:
While it sounds workable, the wind doesn’t blow in a given location 24 hours a day.
This is where efficiency of scale comes in.
If hundreds or thousands of wind turbines were all placed into service in a small geographic area, we would generate a lot of power if the wind was blowing. This has two possible drawbacks:
Example 1:
Earlier this year, so much wind power was being generated in Oregon that hydroelectric plants had to reduce their generation levels by bypassing their generators. This caused water flow rates to exceed the requirements mandated by the EPA, as they applied to fish spawning necessities. It also caused electrical surges on the grid, which could also lead to other complications.
Example 2:
Not too long ago a wind farm in Texas had a drastic power generation drop due to a reduction in available wind. We were quite fortunate that conventional power plants were capable for coming on line quickly to make up for the dramatic drop in generation, but even this has costs.
To bring conventional power plants on line quickly, corners can only be cut at the expense of having to pay spot market rates for fuel, which can be much higher than planned for, and by exceeding designed equipment operational levels, which reduce the expected lifespan of equipment and increases necessary maintenance.
Some of these problems can be overcome by spreading wind generation over larger areas, minimizing the possibility of adverse operating conditions and increasing the possibility of distributing power to higher demand regions.
To make a long story short:
Wind power (like all forms of electrical generation) has good points and bad points. Only through prudent system design, hardware application, acceptance of system limitations and realistic customer expectations can we hope to achieve energy independence.
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