Another problem with wind energy...

[billc]

Hmmm...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...st-europe-s-grid-risking-blackout-energy.html

Germany is dumping electricity on its unwilling neighbors and by wintertime the feud should come to a head. Central and Eastern European countries are moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany’s during the windiest days. That’s when they get flooded with energy, echoing struggles seen from China to Texas over accommodating the world’s 200,000 windmills.

Renewable energy around the world is causing problems because unlike oil it can’t be stored, so when generated it must be consumed or risk causing a grid collapse. At times, the glut can be so great that utilities pay consumers to take the power and get rid of it.
“Germany is aware of the problem, but there is not enough political will to solve the problem because it’s very costly,” Pavel Solc, Czech deputy minister of industry and trade, said in an interview. “So we’re forced to make one-sided defensive steps to prevent accidents and destruction.”
The power grids in the former communist countries are “stretched to their limits” and face potential blackouts when output surges from wind turbines in northern Germany or on the Baltic Sea, according to Czech grid operator CEPS. The Czechs plan to install security switches near borders by year-end to disconnect from Europe’s biggest economy to avoid critical overload.
[h=2]Wind Farms[/h]The bottleneck is one of many in the last eight years as $460 billion of wind farms were built worldwide on plains, hills and at sea before networks were fully expanded to deliver the power to consumers. Upgrading Germany’s system alone to address capacity and technical shortfalls will cost at least 32 billion euros ($42 billion), its four grid operators said in May.
Germany installed more than 8,885 megawatts of wind energy since 2007, mostly in the north. Now it’s studying how to build the power backbone to connect to the industrialized south, home to hundreds of factories such as those of chemicals manufacturer Wacker Chemie AG (WCH)and Siemens AG. (SIE) The electricity detours through the Czech Republic and Poland when German cables can’t handle the load as the countries’ grids are interconnected.
The problem may intensify with the approaching winter. With an insufficient north-south connection, Germany’s power network came close to a collapse last February when high winds in the Baltic sea flooded it with power and the Czech Republic and Poland threatened to disconnect their grids. The coming winter can be critical, German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said last week.

 

[James Kovacich]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass_Wind_Farm#section_2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFJjlj3iPlk&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

 

[geezer]

Interesting idea... having problems with too much domestic power. I think that's something we could learn to live with rather than being so very dependent on oil imports from unstable foreign regimes, or on environmentally harmful coal use or oil from "fracking" here in North America. Incidentally, there are ways to store power generated by wind and solar production. The article Bill cited in the OP referred to one such method, pumped hydro-storage that is currently being used in southern Germany:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

All new technologies bring with them their own peculiar sets of technological, political, and economic problems. And the old technologies of oil and coal production have their problems. So does nuclear power... no matter how safe and cheap we can make it, there's that political hot-potato of waste-storage.
That's why we need to have diverse sources of energy production. You know, hedge your bets.

 

[Sukerkin]

There are, of course, engineering solutions to this problem. It is something that is known about, which is why wind turbines are supposed to be designed so that they can be set to 'idle' in one way or another when the wind blows too hard. This was the short-term stop-gap 'fix' until ways not to waste the energy were developed. Of course, such storage systems are an extra cost (and another civil engineering problem with an attendant pollution 'price tag' too).

One solution is gravity storage (as covered by Geezer above) - you pump water to a high level using the power generated and then you can release it through water turbines to generate electricity when you need it. The other solution is, as you'd expect, a British back-garden inventors one which uses the over-generation to freeze air into a liquid. http://www.hvnplus.co.uk/news/wind-power-energy-storage-technology-revealed/8626077.article

Personally, I think that there is a bit of 'Green account book cooking' going on with wind power to try and make it look considerably better than it is. It does work and can be made to work better still but if I was asked to throw my 'chip into the hat', I'd vote for new nuclear, preferably thorium if we can accelerate the development cycle to catch up with uranium designs. The other solution I favour is the wave-piston systems that generate power by the stroke induced on a sea-bed fixed device. They have maintenance issues but they will work reliably as a generator as long as the earth has a moon .

 

[Xue Sheng]

Another problem with wind energy...


It messes up my hair

 

[Sukerkin]

:grins: I can sell you a SCADA system to deal with that ...

 

[granfire]

There are, of course, engineering solutions to this problem. It is something that is known about, which is why wind turbines are supposed to be designed so that they can be set to 'idle' in one way or another when the wind blows too hard. This was the short-term stop-gap 'fix' until ways not to waste the energy were developed. Of course, such storage systems are an extra cost (and another civil engineering problem with an attendant pollution 'price tag' too).

One solution is gravity storage (as covered by Geezer above) - you pump water to a high level using the power generated and then you can release it through water turbines to generate electricity when you need it. The other solution is, as you'd expect, a British back-garden inventors one which uses the over-generation to freeze air into a liquid. http://www.hvnplus.co.uk/news/wind-power-energy-storage-technology-revealed/8626077.article

Personally, I think that there is a bit of 'Green account book cooking' going on with wind power to try and make it look considerably better than it is. It does work and can be made to work better still but if I was asked to throw my 'chip into the hat', I'd vote for new nuclear, preferably thorium if we can accelerate the development cycle to catch up with uranium designs. The other solution I favour is the wave-piston systems that generate power by the stroke induced on a sea-bed fixed device. They have maintenance issues but they will work reliably as a generator as long as the earth has a moon .

I think we would be better off using cow and pig poop to generate energy instead of nuclear....but that is the closet Hippie talking.
But yeah, those windmills can be turned off (which they do when the wind is too strong)

 

[WC_lun]

Wait, just so I understand the OP correctly, the problem with wind energy is it'll create too much energy? So we've gone from not very much clean energy to too much clean energy, and that is now the main issue. Interesting. Totally false, but interesting.

 

[granfire]

Wait, just so I understand the OP correctly, the problem with wind energy is it'll create too much energy? So we've gone from not very much clean energy to too much clean energy, and that is now the main issue. Interesting. Totally false, but interesting.

LOL, yeah...going from
IT DOES NOT WORK to THEY BULLY THEIR NEIGHBORS TO TAKE SURPLUS

ah, billie....

 

[Sukerkin]

The new nuclear stations that I've been saying for years that we'll build in Britain, despite all eco-protests to the contrary, have had the design approval they need to go ahead:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20701474

I still wish we'd look at an alternative fuel than uranium but time is running short I suppose - I also wish we weren't buying French rather than building our own but that's the way corporate lead politics goes sad to say.

 

[billc]

Thanks for the post Sukerkin. I wish the U.S. would get back into nuclear energy.

 

[Sukerkin]

It's the only realistic path to take for the foreseeable future I reckon :nods:.

There is an energy shortfall looming not far ahead and without power our technological civilisation is on shaky ground; so build fission reactors now and hope we get fusion sorted soon enough that dealing with stocks of fission by-products is a manageable problem.

 

[Tez3]

The new nuclear stations that I've been saying for years that we'll build in Britain, despite all eco-protests to the contrary, have had the design approval they need to go ahead:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20701474

I still wish we'd look at an alternative fuel than uranium but time is running short I suppose - I also wish we weren't buying French rather than building our own but that's the way corporate lead politics goes sad to say.

That's the Conservatives for you, building them here would create jobs and we can't have that now can we. Workers with money oh dear no! Watch which Conservatives have shares in whichever company is building them.

 

[arnisador]

I'm all for nuclear energy, but I fail to see how this is a critique of wind.

 

[Sukerkin]

It isn't as such (not from me at least) - tangentially I suppose it could be because it highlights that wind energy is not going to be able to cope with demand once the oil and gas runs out. But that applies to all the 'renewables' - the technologies will mature and adapt but not quick enough (barring unexpected break-throughs) to save the day.

 

[GrandmasterP]

There's a huge offshore wind-farm spoils the view from our holiday cottage beach near Brancaster.
The flippin things are off more than they are on, either not enough wind or too much wind. Maybe two days in seven you see some actually revolving.

 

[Tez3]

There's a huge offshore wind-farm spoils the view from our holiday cottage beach near Brancaster.
The flippin things are off more than they are on, either not enough wind or too much wind. Maybe two days in seven you see some actually revolving.

The 'Normal for Norfolk' thing doesn't worry you then lol?