Here is the actual production from 3 wind farms in Ontario for July 2006 (2007 numbers not out yet):

http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/genDisclosure.asp

For the total output wind is a mere 0.19%:

For Ontario to get to the target of 15% of total output would mean 78 TIMES more turbines than it has now. Two things become important then. The cost to get the number of turbines needed to get a viable output. And the time it would take to build them. At the current rate of construction it would take more than 100 years to build the turbines needed to get to 15%, to build in a more reasonable time would mean ramping up 10 to 20 TIMES the current rate of construction.

The costs and benifits in this article does not include the problems faced with wind spikes, and any efforts needed to smooth out the output.

I've been following the daily output from Wind, here is what I have so far:

We had a low pressure system move through on the higher outputs. Once a high pressure system settles in the output drops by 80-90%.

Bonjour!
Une question, Jerome...

Do you know why solar thermal (CSP large scale) is almost never included in those studies ?
CSP seems to be very attractive in independent studies, and a worthwhile (if not totally necessary) addition to any future energy mix ?

Apologies, Jerome, in the course of a long thread I overlooked this reply to my question.

I do feel though that the use of 2004 data considerably understates windpower costs, and perhaps more importantly can falsely give the impression of a more-or-less smooth transition to lower costs.

My real objection though is to off-shore wind power, where costs seem ludicrous - £66bn for 33GW nameplate, around 10-11GW actual average hourly, and that does not include transmission lines, back-up and so on.

You can't put seawater through a coal, nuclear etc plant, the salt stuffs everything up. You need fresh water.

You can of course use the plant's power to desalinate seawater to then use in the plant itself, but then you're getting less net energy from the thing.

Fresh water's a big issue for power plants. Here in Victoria we've had power prices rises largely because of that. Most of our power comes from hydroelectric and coal, both of which use a lot of water.

You can use seawater; it just doubles the investment because of the required materials. Also increases the required maintenance by a lot.

Cooling towers are not closed loop. A cooling tower system typically requires 5% of the water circulation as makeup. In a lot of areas even this amount of freshwater is unavailable; let alone a once-through system.

A true closed system is possible. Fin-fan units, ususally using a glycol mixture. It will cost a fortune though, which is why no one wants to do it.

The GE ESBWR will suffer a core meltdown once in every 29 million years of operation.

And computer hard drives have been consistently rated in millions of hours btw failures. However, I find that mine die after a couple of years of intermittent use.

When I hear such long term claims as that, I'm skeptical.

This can easily be overcome if the "obsolate" energy is used for alternative purposes like electrolysis or pumped water storage. It may only reduce the financial appeal of the scheme slightly.
Also newer designs like PBR allow throttling back, it is just that it hardly ever makes sense in real world scenarios (which is the same situation as wind).

Nuclear for baseload and hydro for peak have worked nicely for decades in Sweden or France. I don't see a reason it can not be nuclear + hydro + wind + hydrogen +...

I wonder why solar has such high carbon emissions? Are they talking about rooftop solar (which is really competing with electricity distribution) or some kind of concentrating solar like all the projects being built these days?
I do know that the biggest solar plant complex now around is the Mojave desert one. That does have substantial carbon costs because it is a 24/7 power supply. It burns oil at night to keep the turbines running when the sun isn't shining and heating the heat transfer liquids that operate during the day.

Wind still is a technology in search of a workable application. It seems attractive but how to make it valuable post fossil fuels?

One problems with a nuclear based system is how to accomodate the daily variations in demand. Hydro and gas are great solutions now, but what do we do as we phase out gas and cannot expand or maybe even lose some of our hydro.

We will have to find a way to daily build a despatchable reserve, perhaps through pumped storage. Maybe we run the nuclear above baseload with the excess building the despatchable reserve and feeding the intermittent wind into this process as well.

I think we will have to find a way to make wind and solar work in a power on demand grid where we do not have the current options for the variable demand, even is it costs quite a bit more per KWhr.

Levin, while I appreciate many of your other comments, I think you're repeating a myth here. For one 7-8 % capacity credit for wind is rare, usually it's in the range of 20-30% in the literature. The bigger myth you are putting forward is that wind needs conventional spinning reserve to cover the difference between nameplate and actual production. This is very far from the truth.

When the system operator runs unit commitment, he/she has to make sure there will be enough capacity during the next day and half to cover the demand. Operator has uncertainty how much demand will exactly be as well as uncertainty whether all plants will be able to deliver what they promise. Therefore there has to be reserves. Some of them are spinning or quickly adjustable hydro or load, since a power plant or transmission line can go offline in split second. However, wind power over large area does not change it's output fast (one wind farm might do that, but not wind power from multiple wind farms). The speed of change for wind power is such that it can be covered almost fully with non-spinning reserves. This means that the power plants that will take up production when wind falls off can be powered down while waiting for that to happen. Wind is reasonably predictable on typical unit commitment period of 36 hours and many markets offer nowadays possibilities for redoing unit commitments much closer to operating hour. Also many load following units are warm, but not running, and will fully startup only once called by system operator. They typically have 10-15 minutes to do it.

Another way to look at it: there's no reason to try to guarantee that wind plus something will provide wind power's nameplate capacity. It would be quite enough to guarantee that you will get at least the average production. This would mean that if wind farm is producing at 10% and the average production is 30%, one would need conventional capacity worth 20% of wind power plant's nameplate capacity to get the same capacity and energy contributions from wind. If you go all the way up to 100%, then you give much higher capacity contribution than energy contribution to the system. It would in practice be a peaking plant. Anyway, that's simplified and incorrect way to look at it, since it omits the rest of the system. This paragraph was just an attempt to highlight the mistake you are making.

Personally I think there are reasonable ways in the future to make the power system much more flexible and therefore to make it possible for wind or solar to be a big contributor to zero or low carbon energy system. Heating, cooling, transport, fuel production and manufacturing might offer much cheaper energy storage for electricity than conventional electricity storages, although some of that might also be economic. Still, it will be hard to beat the economics of a gas turbine in peaking operation.

In the long term (wind saturation) overbuilding and grid linking (it's slightly inefficient, but so what?) to loadbalance solves most of your problem.

In the medium and long term, however, hydropower is an entirely throttleable resource (within whatever your environmental tolerances are). We don't necessarily need pumped hydro or serious grid linking to loadbalance a moderate load... we have normal hydro. With minimal work, you can create a system that accumulates water throughout the year and sends it downstream on non-windy weeks.

The amount of hydropower a nation uses gives you an immediate idea of how much windpower their grid can absorb without much modification.

SacredCowTipper -

I think I understand your proposed concept of using a portion of the ammonia produced by you wind>electrolysis>ammonia scheme to serve as fuel for backup generation when wind power is insufficient.

However, I question whether burning ammonia is the most cost-effective way of providing that backup power. The reason I question that is because you are already making hydrogen via electolysis as feedstock for the ammonia plant. So, if you are already making the hydrogen, then why bother putting it through the ammonia plant and why not just store and burn a portion of the hydrogen directly?

I recognize that the long-term storage of hydrogen presents a number of problems, but we're not talking long-term storage here ...... perhaps only 24 or 48 hours worth.

Regardless of the merits of this particular scheme, I think that unless some form of short-term energy storage is eventually integrated into these large wind farms, it will always be unacceptable to have wind power constitute more than some relatively small fraction of a grid's total generating capacity.

An unpredictable, intermittent power supply is not merely inconvenient; it can be downright dangerous.

Joe, I am quite aware of our recent wind event. The timing of such events during the winter is unpredictable, while it is predictable that wind speeds will drop all over Texas during many summer days when electricity demand peaks. We can can extend these predictions to other areas in the United States ands Canada, so the problem in not a local one in Texas. Obviously the advocates of a post-carbon role for wind generated electricity need to acknowledge the problem, study it, and come up with a reasonable plan, or the problem is going to make their business go away.

Texas event was a combination of things, not just wind. Wind did drop, but that's not a problem if it's predicted and this time it wasn't. It's part of normal power system operation to match production with demand. Wind just adds a new layer. Predictions are getting better, but it's hard to say how good they will be. In any case the event also included a 500 MW forecast error in demand and several committed conventional units, which failed to deliver. Couple of days earlier Florida had a blackout apparently due to substation fire, which forced two nuclear units to drop out. This was much worse situation than in Texas. That is not to say that wind will never cause blackouts. No power system is 100% certain to keep lights on at all times, because it would not be worth it. It would be overbuilding the system. When wind is added to the system, the system security actually increases unless load increases more than the capacity credit of the wind at the same time.

Toney, Actually Texas is considered to have good wind resources. The Stanford study which identified 17 locations with the most reliable winds included several locations in texas, and others in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I wont say that there are summer wind problems everywhere, but places where I have confirmed summer wind problems include, the provence of Ontario, California, the American South East where simmer capacity factors drop below 10%, New England, and the upper great planes. There are a few localities on the lower great planes where summer winds may be found.

mbnewtrain, "The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States states,
In summer, wind speeds aloft diminish, and wind power is at its lowest over most of the United States. Although only class 1 or 2 wind power occurs over much of the contiguous United States."
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/chp2.html

It goes on to identify several areas where wind resources are considered Class 3 or better. These would include California, New England and the upper great planes. But other findings suggests that parts of this report may be in error. For example, during the California "heat storm" of 2006 the thermal effect failed, and California winds died away to almost nothing. According to David Dixon, between "August 17 to 23, wind produced at 89.4 to 113.0 MW, averaging only 99.1 MW at the time of peak demand or just 4% of rated capacity.
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1332

Stephen R. Connors of MIT analized data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other data sources tracking wind speeds, electricity demand, and power systems operations over time. Conner found that offshore wind farms in the Northeast would generate far more electricity in winter than in summer, when electricity demand is highest. However, Connor noted about New England off shore wind power that "it’s not there when you need it most—midday during the summer when demand and prices are high,” Never the less, Connor believes that wind power plays a useful role in reducing CO2 emissions.
http://esd.mit.edu/esd_reports/winter2006/offshore_wind_power.html

I do have a quote from Mike Cowan of Western Area Power Administration’s Upper Great Plains Region, but the link has failed.

The Atlas also claims good summer wind resources for the Texas coast, but Texas coastal wind generators Pose a threat to migrating birds:
http://www.prnewsnow.com/Public_Release/Government/174882.html

In addition the problem of Texas summer wind unreliability extends to coastal generating facilities as well. When the ERCOT staff considered the reliability of Texas winds, the considered the reliability of coastal winds as well. They came to the conclusion that only 2% of nameplate Texas wind generating capacity was sufficiently reliable to be included as peak electricity generating capacity.

Advocates of wind energy need to be very careful about making reliability claims. One day ill considered claims can come back to haunt the business.

On the Pacific coast of California, at the hottest times, the land-sea temperature differential is the largest so the wind blows the strongest.

Yeah, lots of studies.
Here are a couple of links:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9539765
Power transmission | Where the wind blows | Economist.com

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071019184844.htm

And here is a less optimistic view:
http://www.windaction.org/documents/461
www.windaction.org | E.ON Netz Wind Report 2005

Since wind power itself requires large subsidies before you start budgeting for massive power grids, most of the super grid advocates seem to have the natural optimism of someone intending to spend someone else's money to me, but YMMV

the wind is always blowing somewhere - Arclite

This is the fundamental myth of the wind crowd. In fact it is possible for winds to be insufficient everywhere to meet high summer power demands.

Since that date, wind-power costs for new build have gone up like a rocket, mainly due to increased materials costs, which may to a degree be associated with high fossil fuel costs, and so may not rapidly moderate.

The same argument is likely to apply to new nuclear installations.

Jerome, I wonder if you would address the point I raised in a previous post that costs for wind-turbines have increased so greatly since the figures given in your graph for 2004 that they are rather misleading?

Rises is materials costs have hit wind-turbines much harder than alternatives as they are so material-intensive.

The source of my figures is the Centrica, who will buy the power - here is the reference:
http://www.cnplus.co.uk/News/2008/02/centrica_to_invest_3bn_in_wind_farm...

This also accords well with government figures:
http://www.renewables-advisory-board.org.uk/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=13
Offshore Wind Cost Study (ODE Ltd) - RAB Forum

Surely the figure of £2bnGW you refer to is for nameplate build, not actual output?

If that is the case our figures are similar, but I know of no-one suggesting that you can get an actual output of 1GW from wind for £2bn.

The point you make about funding of nuclear is a fair one, at least in terms of the limitation of liability in the States the cost of commencing a program to give more experience in countries other than France so that rates may fall however seems to be manageable, and I doubt that in France itself the cost difference is so large as nuclear power for electricity is tried and tested.

I do tend to focus on build costs rather than levelised costs, as so much of the levelised figures depend on the assumptions, and I have seen widely disparate figures whereas the build costs are less disputable, although they too still have a pretty wide margin.
Perhaps this is something of a bias to nuclear power, as finance is certainly more costly than for windpower, but OTOH I do not usually include the cost of transmission lines and so on in the case of wind power, which due to their remote locations can be high, whereas current proposals for UK nuclear use mostly existing generating sites so they are wired up, and my estimates for nuclear costs are based on the one being built in Finland, which is a one-off and being build by a workforce which is learning as it goes and has had several re-writes to the specs, all things which would be hopefully overcome in a series build in the UK.
I also give no allowance at all for possible future advances in nuclear costs such as the use of annular fuel, which is a fairly technically trivial alteration and should reduce costs/kwh by a large amount.

So financing is certainly a strength of windpower, but I believe I have made adequate adjustment to off-set it in my estimates.

In any case nuclear energy is a proven way of generating most of the electricity for a society, and the upshot judging by power costs in France seems to be reasonable electricity rates.

At the end of the day though, at the moment I simply can't see another way than nuclear of generating the power we need, at least at the latitude and with the space restrictions of the UK, than nuclear power.

Even those huge plans of building 33GW nameplate off-shore would only generate around 10-11 GW of actual output per average hour, as against a peak power requirement of around 75GW for the UK.

The situation is not quite as bleak as that sounds though, as in the UK wind power tracks use very well, being around 2.5 times stronger in the winter than in June, so you are talking in ball-park figures around 15GW generated at peak periods:

http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf
sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf

Just the same though, as most of the close in-shore sites would be taken by this build, you would have to go to still deeper waters at even larger cost to generate a very large part of the UK requirements - and no-one has had to deal with the issue of intermittency at very high penetration rates.

For wind power to really mean something at economical rates in the UK I think we would need to develop other systems than wind turbines.

Paul, don't forget Canada is increasing its population by 250,000 immigrants each year, most of whom settle in Ontario. So it's not liekly we will see anything but continued increase in demand on our system regardless of the time of year.

I don't doubt there will be continued demand growth over time, but the overall rate of growth is falling rapidly and the make-up is evolving, i.e., residential and industrial demand are trending downward whereas commercial is picking up share. As it turns out, Ontario's system peak in 2007 was 25,737 MW which is 1,268 MW or 5 per cent below that of 2006 and only 323 MW or 1.36 per cent above that of 2002.

Energy consumption was largely unchanged in 2007 (152 TWh) and below that of five years ago (153 TWh) and just 8.5 per cent above that of ten years ago (140 TWh). The current ten-year IESO forecast expects consumption to reach 170 TWh by 2015, for an average annual growth rate 0.9 per cent, but this number doesn't take into consideration any of the province's conservation efforts. That's significant because the Integrated Power System Plan calls for a 25.6 TWh savings by the year 2025.

Note too the following quote with respect to population growth and electricity demand:

"...while population and households were up 19 percent and 25 percent, respectively, and total residential floor area was up 32 percent (a trend toward bigger houses continued throughout the period), residential electricity actually declined from 1990-1998, and by 2003 had only just regained its 1990 level of about 47,000 GW.hours. The average electricity use per household declined fully 16 percent during this period, as compared with a decline in per household energy use (including all fuels) of 6.1 percent."

Source: http://www.conservationbureau.on.ca/Storage/14/1959_OPA_Report_FactorAna...

An aging population will likely shift Ontario's housing stock towards smaller homes and multi-family dwellings and this, combined with more stringent building codes and other conservation initiatives, more efficient heating and cooling systems and energy efficient appliances will likely depress per capita and per family consumption in the years to come.

Cheers,
Paul

The Stanford study looked at the effects of wide area wind capture, but not massively wide. Even at the limited geographic area of the study, smoothing of power output was remarkable.

The big problem with wind is not turbines but transmission lines. Transmission lines are to electricity what refineries are to oil: absolutely essential but having low-profit potential and nobody wants to build them.

These three mega-areas I propose would be connected to each other and then to the North American grid. It would be nice if superconducting transmission lines were available to feed the grid, but the system can work without them, albeit at higher transmission loss rates.

But it's not the high voltage national grid transmission lines that are the main problem. It's the feeder lines. Right now, they criss-cross the country in a somewhat hit or miss fashion. A strategic long-range plan, with transmission lines and turbine siting predetermined, before they are built, allowing for the orderly phasing in of wind turbine farms, is essential. You don't build the whole system at once. Neither was the interstate highway system. But before there was a highway system, there was a plan.

I attended a windpower conference two years ago in Crookston, MN, where I came to the realization that for windpower to be more than a bit player it needed far more planning than has been talked about to date.

I spoke with a transmission line specialist for Minnkota Power Cooperative, and told him we had Minnkota's 240 kv DC transmission line running across one mile of our land. He said there's no way that would ever be allowed to be tapped into. Then I mentioned there was also a 60 kv AC line running through our land. He said that's the one to tap into. Right now there is a severe shortage of those kinds of feeder lines. Wind power developments are held up not by lack of interest in putting up turbines but by lack of feeder line capacity.

A second problem arose during the discussion on a model windpower zoning ordinance that was being developed for Minnesota counties. Because of offsets required at property lines, it was immediately apparent that private property plots are too small a division for the efficient placement of wind turbines. This is true even on the Northern Plains, where the standard measure of land is the quarter-section (160 acres).

If the windy, flat center of the North American continent were developed for windpower, there would be no need to put turbines on tops of mountains, in scenic areas, off the coast, near urban or high density rural areas (over 10 people per square mile). Put them where they'll be most effective and have the least negative impact on the lowest number of people.