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Posted on 11/25/2008 9:55:16 AM PST by Uncledave
Wind Energy Reaches 43 Percent Of Spain's Electrical Demand by NAW staff on Tuesday 25 November 2008
At 5 a.m. Central European Time (CET) on Nov. 24, wind power reached a new record of meeting 43% of Spain's electricity demand - with 9,253 MW of wind energy in operation - of the 21,264 MW total demand.
The previous record was broken March 22 at 6 p.m. CET, with 40.8% of the demand, or 9,862 MW. At 12:30 p.m. CET on Nov. 24, 10,263 MW were being produced simultaneously. The previous record of 10,880 MW of wind production was reached on April 18 at 4:50 p.m. CET, representing 30% of the peninsula's demand.
According to La Asociacion Empresarial Eolica, wind energy prices could drop to 6 euros per MWh. Wind energy has experienced a savings of 2.077 billion euros for the electrical system (4.50 euros of savings per citizen).
SOURCE: La Asociacion Empresarial Eolica
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Surely only at peak output.
I can’t believe this statistic.
“According to La Asociacion Empresarial Eolica, wind energy prices could drop to 6 euros per MWh. Wind energy has experienced a savings of 2.077 billion euros for the electrical system (4.50 euros of savings per citizen).”
Very nice to see that they have made this actually save money. Not much per person but I do like to see green energy when it is cost competitive.
Has it saved them any money? Are the just comparing Wind power rates vs Conventional, without the costs of building infrastructure?
And, at 5am - minimal demand.
It powered 43% of Spain's glowing alarm clocks.
I’m just going by the quote.
The previous records were at noon and 5 pm though. So it has been handy at other times.
It’s good that they get some significant power from the wind. The problem is, if they can’t rely on the source, they still need to have the redunant suppliers online at all times. Kinda minimizes the positive impact outside those brief gloriously windy moments.
Computerization of both the electric power supply systems, and of individual households can deal with this problem. Say you’ve got a plug-in car, it can be set to charge up at the time when power is cheapest to generate, and that might be around 5 AM.
Wind is unreliable and cannot be more than a small fraction of US supply given our grid requirements. Too much wind power in a grid will cause it to crash. Ideally we sshould have nuclear power covering majority of the baseload and a few gas plants taking care of the peak demand.
The percentage would be expected to be highest at night, when the wind speeds typically are highest and when demand is lowest. Without any data showing how these figures compare with other time of day/time of year figures, this is only a “feel good” report.
Nuclear and wind don’t mix well, because it is difficult to alter the output of a nuke plant. So wind really needs to be backed up with coal or gas.
What this deceptive news article doesn’t say is for how long did wind power hit 43% of base load? Was it 5 minutes or one hour or what? Let’s give it the benefit of doubt and say it was one hour - that’s still a very very small amount of electricity production compared to total demand in one day (1.8% of daily demand). Also, you can’t predict when this 43% of electricity will be available. And you still have to pay conventional energy suppliers (coal, gas, nuclear) to generate backup power (which has to be paid for) because wind power is so unreliable. Forty three percent of pure redundant power is not much to brag about.
Tennessee was using 28,000 MW last week.
“I can’t believe this statistic.”
I was just in Spain (briefly) a few weeks ago & took a tour to a little town called Mijas about an hour’s drive from Malaga on the coast. We were told Mijas got electricity finally in 1996. So how many other towns are not on the grid yet? And I doubt they’re as wired in as we are. Maybe wind is enough...for awhile.
I’m curious as to the cost,today,of one killowatt hour of electricity generated by wind vs one generated in more conventional ways.And assuming wind power is a *lot* more expensive than traditional power by how much can wind power be made cheaper over time...if it can be made at all cheaper?
Why is it difficult to regulate the power on a nuke?
Where in the world is the average wind speed higher at night than day?
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