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
This sounds very low. Too bad it isn't mentioned whether this includes any capital, installation or maintenance costs.
In an area with a strong wind resource and with modern equipment, wind energy can be generated near par with coal/nat gas (but nuke is the cheapest which I also support).
Wind costs are being driven down as the industry continues to develop.
People here mention the problems with wind’s intermittent nature. It’s a valid point but not a problem to the degree people here are saying. When you have thousands of wind farms scattered across a region of the country, coupled with modern wind forecasting techniques which are remarkably good, you’re then able to forecast wind energy across a region’s portfolio of assets rather well and schedule peak plants accordingly. You don’t look at wind energy grid issues as the output and intermittency of ONE wind turbine — you look at a portfolio of hundreds and hundreds of them. More and more operators are able to use wind to chip away at base load.
About 9-11% of Spain’s power is wind generated.
The problem with wind power is actually power storage. Thermal generating plants have a consistent power output which is not the case for wind power.
The highly variable electrical output of wind power means that the effective usage is low, and the actual replacement of traditional power plants doesn’t take place. The traditional thermal or hydroelectric plants must remain on-line in case the wind power output drops. The lower energy availability of the wind farms determines the reliability of the system as a whole without adequate storage.
Without an adequate storage scheme the utility companies must build more traditional power plants to meet peak demand. Compressed-air storage is the best system so far to achieve this storage. This raises the cost of wind power and reduces its competitiveness against traditional power plants and means a higher utility bill.
If you’re interested in knowing more about leading wind forecasting services, here’s a couple of leaders in the field:
www.windlogics.com
www.3tier.com
www.awstruewind.com
I know these firms well. They have some of the most qualified meteorologists and atmospheric scientists you’ll find.
In other news, the cyclones that appeared Monday morning have finally dissipated...
Of course storage would be a total game-changer, but even now there's effective ways to manage wind farms (see my #22).
I expect in the near future electric plug-in vehicles will be more widely adopted in urban/suburban areas. Millions of vehicles plugging in at night will be a robust and decentralized storage system and will greatly improve the economics of wind energy.
...it was unknown how many birds were killed...
Taken together (demand and wind speed), it's still unsurprising that the highest percentage would have occurred overnight, when power is usually abundant.
I certainly hope we utilize wind power more as well as nuclear. The dependence for energy on something we don’t produce is a vulnerability.
Compressed air storage is a proven technology which we should put to use despite the cost. Nuclear power also needs to be streamlined and states like California which prevent the increase of national energy output should be removed from the national power grid.
The sun generally causes wind (that wind, not associated with weather fronts. Generally, they are higher during the day.
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/wres/variab.htm
Compressed air storage is tricky and loses a lot of energy in the conversion process on both ends. One area where you gain with it is with capital costs on the turbine — you can directly drive an air compressor vs. using the gearbox/generator within the wind turbine. A couple of firms are working on this but it’s real on-the-drawing-board stuff.
Thanks!
I think at least one Spanish company is serious about wind generation. About four years ago it hired a promising power engineering student from Maine to work for them. If they cast their recuiting net that far they must be serious.
I find this hard to believe.
I have seen many other sources state that wind power, due to the peaks and valleys of production by such an inconsistent source, could never be more than 20% of total supply for any grid. Also, even the 20% figure was theoretical, as even relatively large wind-energy producers such as Netherlands and Denmark have not even come close to that figure.
Any experts out there who can solve this?
Yeah and we should make better use of it as well as the oil shale’s. Retrofitting MHD generator’s into older coal plants is one good idea, as well as coal liquefaction. Oil will rise in price eventually and make this economical.
What they dont tell you is that all that wind power needs back up power called spinning reserves.Spain is right next to France with huge spinning reserves of nuclear power especially at 5am when demand is at its low for the day. France is all to happy to sell its reserve nuclear power at an instant to Spain should the wind stop blowing. It’s a myth that nuclear power cant load follow. modern reactors can and do load follow on a daily basis in France. Who are using American designed reactors i might addm there whole system is based on Westinghouse reactors designed by yup us.
Gamesa, Acciona and Ecnotecnia (just bought by Alstom) are three major wind Spanish turbine manufacturers that do business worldwide and are aggressively pursuing US projects.
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