Who knew that the U.S. was one of the most wind-wealthy nations on the planet? Not me. The orange-y area in the map above, from the latest Atlantic, shows the most opportune places for wind farms in the U.S. [Click to expand]
But the article highlights two big problems: transmission and variability:
Pickens’s windmills (like most of Texas’s) will be in the west, where the wind blows the most. The big cities are in the east. This problem plagues wind power nationally: people typically don’t live where the wind blows hardest, so you have to send power from, say, upstate to downstate New York, or from the Dakotas to the cities of the Midwest. […]
Wind farms [also] tend to produce the most energy when it’s not needed—at night and in the spring and fall, when demand is low. The hottest, highest-demand days of the year are the days when wind’s contribution is likely to be near zero. So wind, if it is to meet demand reliably, must be backed up, typically by (emissions-spewing) natural-gas plants that can ramp up and down quickly.
4 Responses
What about biomass?
What you need to complement wind power is something flexible, that can be easily turned on and off, at low cost.
That is certainly not coal, which is incredibly inflexible, and the reason to why electricity is so much cheaper at night than during the day. Nuclear power is even worse, in this respect.
So what you need certainly isn’t coal or nuclear.
Hydropower, however, is extremely flexible. You simply close the gate when the wind blows, and the water is stored in the magazines for later use.
“The hottest, highest-demand days of the year are the days when wind’s contribution is likely to be near zero. So wind, if it is to meet demand reliably, must be backed up, typically by (emissions-spewing) natural-gas plants that can ramp up and down quickly.”
Hmmmm… really hot days when the sun is shining a lot and there’s no wind. I wonder what other renewables we could devise for that situation. Perhaps something directly powered by the sun.
That would certainly offset the need for storage.
The last line is so unfortunate. For wind to be reliable doesn’t need a coal back up. It needs storage capacity. This is such a simple concept, yet everyone seems to repeat the lie. Drives me nuts.