Charge at night! - 25 TWh of Wind Power Idled in 2010

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DaveEV

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25 TWh of Wind Power Idled in 2010 in US – Grid Storage Needed
Approximately 25 TWh (yes, 25 terawatt-hours) of wind energy was curtailed (idled) in the U.S. last year to keep the off-peak grid energy price from frequently going negative. That is about equal to the energy in 700 million gallons of gasoline just being thrown away. Curtailed wind energy in the U.S. appears likely to exceed 40 TWh in 2011.
Seems way higher than I'd expect, but it certainly emphasizes that we should be charging during off-peak whenever possible. I know that here in CA minimum grid demand is typically around 3-4 am, though most of my charging tends to occur between 1am-3am.

Makes me wish I could set a charge timer that centered the charge around the middle of the off-peak time period of 12am-5am - so if the car knows it has to charge for 2 hours, it'd charge from 1:30am-3:30am - or if it knew it had to charge for 4 hours it'd charge from 12:30am-4:30am. This would also have the benefit of automatically distributing the start / end times which avoids the spike in demand when the off-peak TOU period starts.
 
25 TWh ??

At 4mi/kWh, 12000 annual miles in a leaf will take 3000 kWh.

So that was enough electricity to power 8.3 million Leafs. Check my math.
 
While I agree with "Charge at night!", I have a cannot believe 25 TWh of actual energy was actually "turned off".
From http://www.awea.org/learnabout/industry_stats/index.cfm, there was about 47 GW of total capacity at the end of 2011. At the end of 2010 it was around 40 GW. I estimated that 25 TWh is 8.56 GW x 8 hr/d x 365 d/yr. So, that means idling at least 21% of the ENTIRE US wind capacity every night, all night, all year, AND assuming that the entire fleet produces at 100% during that time. Nope, that ain't happening.
Sorry, more sensationalism.
Yes, there was some curtailment as discussed in this thread: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4099, but not all night, every night.

I suppose, it I spent some brainpower, I could come up with 25 TWh of unused "capacity" or something similar, but that is not actual curtailment or lost revenue. If you look at this week's power production/consumption at http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg3.aspx you'll see the wind is being used right now, even with very high hydro production and water runoff.

So, yes, charge at night, and charge as much as possible during the spring run off! Let's take those vacations during May and June, consuming as many of the "good" electrons as possible. Then when the summer heat hits, turn off the A/C and take the bus/bicycle to the beach. Charge ON! Drive ON!.

Reddy
 
Ran across this article today:

BPA orders NW wind farms to curtail production
The Bonneville Power Administration has ordered Pacific Northwest wind farms to cut production twice in recent days because it has a surplus of power from hydroelectric dams.


This article says: Bonneville Power calls for first wind shutdown of the season
In all 10,100 megawatt hours of wind energy was curtailed over the two-day.
That article also says that they are turning down nuclear power to help avoid further shutdowns.

Would be nice to get some credible numbers on how much wind exactly sits idle because of overcapacity and lack of transmission. I know it's a large problem in Texas right now.

Edit: This article says that 824,000 MWh were curtailed in the midwest in 2010: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those-wind-turbines-turning/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Edit 2: One also has to wonder how much hydro power is lost due to overcapacity - after all - if the grid could suck down more power they'd be able to run more power through the turbines instead of spilling it... The reason wind has to be idled is so that the hydro guys can run more water through the turbines instead of spilling it...
 
And then there is this...

"Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9234715/Wind-farms-can-cause-climate-change-finds-new-study.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
drees said:
Ran across this article today:

BPA orders NW wind farms to curtail production
The Bonneville Power Administration has ordered Pacific Northwest wind farms to cut production twice in recent days because it has a surplus of power from hydroelectric dams.


This article says: Bonneville Power calls for first wind shutdown of the season
In all 10,100 megawatt hours of wind energy was curtailed over the two-day.
That article also says that they are turning down nuclear power to help avoid further shutdowns.

Would be nice to get some credible numbers on how much wind exactly sits idle because of overcapacity and lack of transmission. I know it's a large problem in Texas right now.

Edit: This article says that 824,000 MWh were curtailed in the midwest in 2010: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those-wind-turbines-turning/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Edit 2: One also has to wonder how much hydro power is lost due to overcapacity - after all - if the grid could suck down more power they'd be able to run more power through the turbines instead of spilling it... The reason wind has to be idled is so that the hydro guys can run more water through the turbines instead of spilling it...
I don't think that's the reason, I'd think it's more likely a cost issue. Hydro is cheaper than wind. This is a problem in Denmark, where they wind up subsidizing power in Norway and Sweden when the wind turbines are putting out near peak. Denmark doesn't have any way to use all the power, so sends it to Norway and Sweden where it replaces less expensive hydro. In effect the Danes are getting a negative price for their power, cause they buy hydro power back when the wind isn't blowing. That's the trouble with intermittent, non-dispatchable renewables.

In the PG&E service area, we're fortunate that the wind tends to blow strongest in the wee hours, unlike many places where the winds are strongest during the day (but often die out during the summer, when the need is greatest).
 
GRA said:
I don't think that's the reason, I'd think it's more likely a cost issue. Hydro is cheaper than wind.
Hydro isn't cheaper than wind when you have to pay the wind farms to stop producing. It must be cheaper than dumping too much water over the falls of hydro plants (which is illegal since too much spillover dirties up the water and harms fish) since they are shutting down wind farms to avoid spilling too much water.
 
The good news - wind as baseload! :)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
abstract said:
Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. The array consequently behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power. In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m s1 (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy. Although most parameters, such as intermittency, improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected sites.
 
AndyH said:
The good news - wind as baseload! :)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
abstract said:
Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. The array consequently behaves more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power. In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind turbines, greater than 6.9 m s1 (class 3 or greater). It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy. Although most parameters, such as intermittency, improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected sites.

I think Jacobson is a bit over the top when claiming that connecting to the transmission grid is simple.
 
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those-wind-turbines-turning/
Far and away the primary cause of curtailment is limited transmission, Moland said. There has in recent years been large-scale rapid development in the wind-rich Midwestern regions of the U.S. from the Canadian border to Texas, “where you get that 40 percent wind availability.” Transmission development has not kept pace.

“You can go from starting construction to delivering power at a wind site in twelve months, or even less, whereas building a transmission line to service a new site,” Moland said, “usually takes three to five years.”
We can hope transmission capacity will catch up.
 
I can believe it's idle since a large number of the turbines in the central ks farms (c. 2009) weren't even connected to the grid because "it's too expensive to connect them".

I'll dig up the article if I can find it.
 
drees said:
Ran across this article today:

BPA orders NW wind farms to curtail production
The Bonneville Power Administration has ordered Pacific Northwest wind farms to cut production twice in recent days because it has a surplus of power from hydroelectric dams.


This article says: Bonneville Power calls for first wind shutdown of the season
In all 10,100 megawatt hours of wind energy was curtailed over the two-day.
That article also says that they are turning down nuclear power to help avoid further shutdowns.

Would be nice to get some credible numbers on how much wind exactly sits idle because of overcapacity and lack of transmission. I know it's a large problem in Texas right now.

Edit: This article says that 824,000 MWh were curtailed in the midwest in 2010: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those-wind-turbines-turning/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Edit 2: One also has to wonder how much hydro power is lost due to overcapacity - after all - if the grid could suck down more power they'd be able to run more power through the turbines instead of spilling it... The reason wind has to be idled is so that the hydro guys can run more water through the turbines instead of spilling it...
drees, I haven't read all of those links, but thanks for finding this article http://sustainablebusinessoregon.com/articles/2012/04/bonneville-power-calls-for-first-wind.html which pretty much confirms my skepticism of the titled OP. The article says 97,557 MWh curtailed last season. Assuming d/24h x yr/365 d x 1/0.35 capacity, that works out to about 31.8 MW curtailed out of about 4000 MW total in the BPA area. That's only 0.8% curtailment for the PNW, nowhere near the 21% required to curtail 25 TWh nationally. Hey, I like to see us using clean energy, but losing less than 1% isn't bad.

As for this past Sun/Mon curtailment, I am guessing the BPA could do it because the forecast didn't call for much wind. I checked this before the weekend because I planned to bicycle about 75 miles. Saturday was beautiful, just as predicted, but Sunday was WINDY. I am guessing that BPA said, hey wind guys you are scheduled for "only" x amount of power because of the wind forecast, so that's all you get to supply. Tough deal that your forecast didn't work out, try again tomorrow.

Well, I did my best. I charged fully on Sunday night, then drove an extra 30 miles Monday, and charged to 100% again over night. Now if we could only get another million EVs on the roads doing the same. :p

Reddy.
 
drees said:
GRA said:
I don't think that's the reason, I'd think it's more likely a cost issue. Hydro is cheaper than wind.
Hydro isn't cheaper than wind when you have to pay the wind farms to stop producing. It must be cheaper than dumping too much water over the falls of hydro plants (which is illegal since too much spillover dirties up the water and harms fish) since they are shutting down wind farms to avoid spilling too much water.
Sure, but that assumes that you are _required_ to take the wind power, which apparently isn't the case with Denmark and Norway/Sweden. If you don't have (or don't need) an RPS, you can just say "thanks but no thanks, we'll use our cheaper hydro." AIUI, the deal in the Scandinavian countries is that their hydro acts as baseload backup for Denmark when the wind isn't producing, so Denmark is willing to pay them what amounts to a subsidy.
 
Reddy said:
drees said:
Ran across this article today:

BPA orders NW wind farms to curtail production
The Bonneville Power Administration has ordered Pacific Northwest wind farms to cut production twice in recent days because it has a surplus of power from hydroelectric dams.


This article says: Bonneville Power calls for first wind shutdown of the season
In all 10,100 megawatt hours of wind energy was curtailed over the two-day.
That article also says that they are turning down nuclear power to help avoid further shutdowns.

Would be nice to get some credible numbers on how much wind exactly sits idle because of overcapacity and lack of transmission. I know it's a large problem in Texas right now.

Edit: This article says that 824,000 MWh were curtailed in the midwest in 2010: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those-wind-turbines-turning/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Edit 2: One also has to wonder how much hydro power is lost due to overcapacity - after all - if the grid could suck down more power they'd be able to run more power through the turbines instead of spilling it... The reason wind has to be idled is so that the hydro guys can run more water through the turbines instead of spilling it...
drees, I haven't read all of those links, but thanks for finding this article http://sustainablebusinessoregon.com/articles/2012/04/bonneville-power-calls-for-first-wind.html which pretty much confirms my skepticism of the titled OP. The article says 97,557 MWh curtailed last season. Assuming d/24h x yr/365 d x 1/0.35 capacity, that works out to about 31.8 MW curtailed out of about 4000 MW total in the BPA area. That's only 0.8% curtailment for the PNW, nowhere near the 21% required to curtail 25 TWh nationally. Hey, I like to see us using clean energy, but losing less than 1% isn't bad.

As for this past Sun/Mon curtailment, I am guessing the BPA could do it because the forecast didn't call for much wind. I checked this before the weekend because I planned to bicycle about 75 miles. Saturday was beautiful, just as predicted, but Sunday was WINDY. I am guessing that BPA said, hey wind guys you are scheduled for "only" x amount of power because of the wind forecast, so that's all you get to supply. Tough deal that your forecast didn't work out, try again tomorrow.

Well, I did my best. I charged fully on Sunday night, then drove an extra 30 miles Monday, and charged to 100% again over night. Now if we could only get another million EVs on the roads doing the same. :p

Reddy.
Yeah, lacking any cheap way to store electricity at utility scales, EVs and Wind/PV are a necessary synergy. Either that or pumped storage will be required, but you can't do the latter just anywhere even when NIMBYism isn't a factor.
 
Reddy said:
That's only 0.8% curtailment for the PNW, nowhere near the 21% required to curtail 25 TWh nationally. Hey, I like to see us using clean energy, but losing less than 1% isn't bad.
Kind of funny the article doesn't mention that isn't it? Also some irony in the title for the original calling for more grid storage. Isn't that what the reservoir behind a dam does: store energy?

In the case of the PNW, BPA has been saying that they can't spill all of the water from the excess snow melt b/c it will kill salmon (http://ecotrope.opb.org/2011/05/bpa-shuts-off-wind-power-to-make-way-for-hydro/) even though most Salmon advocate associations say that's bunk (scroll to bottom of: http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-pac...s-paid-to-not-produce-20120308,0,190781.story). My guess is that that it is cheaper for the PG&E to get hydro power than wind power so they take what BPA gives them first. I am also pretty sure that reimbursing the wind farms doesn't come out of PG&E's pocket b/c the wind farms say they lose money when they aren't spinning and the articles above use the word 'taxpayer' and not 'ratepayer' is used when reimbursements are mentioned.

To me this sounds more like a grid management problem than a generation issue. There is always a need for electricity somewhere, why can't we get it there? I mean Oregon sells hydro power to California all the time, can't BPA sell the power at a discount? Can't the coal/gas/nuclear baseload generators can't throttle down enough? This particular problem is caused by unusual runoff, it won't happen all the time or even every year, certainly the articles should mention this as well as what a small percentage of power we are dealing with.

I wish reporters still did actual work instead of just calling two sides of an issue on the phone and parroting whatever they heard (from sources with a clear conflict of interest). Whatever happened to thinking about the big picture, checking the facts, and distilling what is correct for the public interest?
 
padamson1 said:
I wish reporters still did actual work instead of just calling two sides of an issue on the phone and parroting whatever they heard (from sources with a clear conflict of interest). Whatever happened to thinking about the big picture, checking the facts, and distilling what is correct for the public interest?
If I had my preference, I'd take reporting of what all sides of an issue are saying versus the editorialized and possibly censored output that some media outlets deliver. Just be sure they let us know what the credentials and possible motivations of the sources are so I can judge for myself how much weight to assign to each viewpoint.
 
padamson1 said:
To me this sounds more like a grid management problem than a generation issue. There is always a need for electricity somewhere, why can't we get it there?
Agreed. When I look at http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg3.aspx for Sunday and Monday (midnight to 4am or so), you can really see the wind curtailments. But what is also interesting, is that the "interchange" (purple) drops DRAMATICALLY (>2-3 GW) during this same time. So now you can't say that the grid is overloaded! They just didn't send as much power to other areas. Hmmm, smells fishy to me. There must be a fossil fueled power plant somewhere that could have been turned off instead. From the graph, there was at least 1500 MW thermal running (1100 MW is probably the Columbia Generating Station (WPPSS, Wooopps for those that remember). Last year we had the nuclear plant off-line all summer and we still had too much power. This year may be a bit more contentious.

Reddy
 
Hydro needs to be ON because when spilling water the the nitrogen content of the water is increased and kills the fish. When the water goes through turbines the nitrogen does not increases. Some turbines have oxygen injection.
Most of the dams on the lower Columbia are "run of the river", they have very limited storage capacity. When the snow starts to melt the water needs to go, also the fish is waiting for the increase water flow to start migration upstream.
Last week at Bonneville dam, all units were running and the spillway was open. The flow was over to 400000 cubic feet a second. They CANNOT stop the turbines unless they open the spillway more and kill the fish.
 
camasleaf said:
Most of the dams on the lower Columbia are "run of the river", they have very limited storage capacity.

We're not so nice to the Colorado here in the west.

800px-Horseshoebend_smt.jpg


-Wikipedia

On the bright side, the power is more easily dispatched. We also desperately need that water for drinking and farming so not much gets to the ocean. Seems like electricity is only a side benefit sometimes...

Jeremy
 
camasleaf said:
Hydro needs to be ON because when spilling water the the nitrogen content of the water is increased and kills the fish. When the water goes through turbines the nitrogen does not increases. Some turbines have oxygen injection.
Most of the dams on the lower Columbia are "run of the river", they have very limited storage capacity. When the snow starts to melt the water needs to go, also the fish is waiting for the increase water flow to start migration upstream.
Last week at Bonneville dam, all units were running and the spillway was open. The flow was over to 400000 cubic feet a second. They CANNOT stop the turbines unless they open the spillway more and kill the fish.
That's what BPA says, but the scientists working for Save Our Salmon, etc contend that's not true. That's why I cited the 2nd article in my post. Here is another that is more one point http://www.sustainablebusinessoregon.com/articles/2012/04/salmon-may-benefit-from-spilling.html

As with other things the truth is probably somewhere in between. Myself, I find it a little too convenient that hydro is prioritized over (the more expensive) wind power, especially since ratepayers who green source their power are paying a couple of cents extra per kWh, adding to the profit incentive.
 
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