Posts by Marty365

Wind Electricity is not for storing

I believe Portugal is ahead of Spain in this and Holland frequently goes 100% wind at certain times .. I'm not sure where the writer was coming from .. but the idea that wind power needs back-up any more than conventional power is flawed .. there has not been one MW of back-up plant installed as a result of WTGs the reserve is there already designed to catch the system when one of the large generators trips - which is quite often.

Clearly, there is obvious public anxiety about lights going out and wind with its variable output obviously can not satisfy all of the people all of the time - but fundamentally wind generation is not intended for that. Wind power saves fossil fuel which is expensive and contributes to the carbon burden - the marginal cost of wind is pretty well zero so the last generator you would turn off would be a wind one (if it's running - which is most of the time) - as for storage of wind this is a complete non-sense (unless in remote communities with stand alone power needs). If you have an electricity network with a variety of generation sources you may choose to store some energy through pumped storage but quite a bit 20%+ is lost in the round trip. So imagine, you have a system and you have some "spare" capacity (voltage rising) you decide to lower the voltage by either shutting down capacity or doing some pumping .. if you were shutting down you would choose the most expensive plant first so it follows that if you choose to store it will cost you what you could have saved and some because of the losses in the round trip ..

The advantage of pumped storage is that it can put a very large amount of power on the system very quickly and so has the capability of rescuing the system in an emergency - emergencies that have never been created by wind generators (yet).

We (and those who comment) must learn to live with our wind generators and love them for what they provide not try to will them to provide something they are not capable of or designed for. It is true to say that wind is not the cheapest way to save carbon by any means but I see it is an investment for our future energy needs and of course I would say that I develop WTGs :-) .