There’s an article on digg today about the world’s largest wind turbine order. I felt it was time to educate some people about the cold hard facts of energy generation. There are a lot of environmental nutcases, whom have a point which I do agree with, but have no clue about what the correct solution is. Every time they see proposals for wind farms and solar power stations they automatically think that those are the solutions. A mob mentality, if you will. I decided to try and educate them with my digg comment:
When will people realise that 1MW from wind energy is not the same as 1MW from Nuclear or Coal? For every MW of Wind, you need a MW of always on capacity elsewhere in the grid. If you don’t, there is going to be rolling blackouts and brownouts whenever the wind doesn’t blow. People often don’t realise that there is currently NO WAY to STORE electrical energy. Pump Hydro can do it, but is only possible in a limited number of locations. Whichever way you look at it, the conclusion is that we need nuclear power.
You would not argue with a Quantum Physicist about Quantum Physics if you were not one yourself, so why argue with an Electrical Engineer? But people do…
You can read the full comments here. I’ll try and expand some of my additional comments and replies below.
A lot of people do not understand that there is NO WAY TO STORE ELECTRICAL POWER at sufficient level for utilisation in a grid system. I laugh at people’s ignorance when they suggest battery storage.
Having no single source of power is definitely a good thing. However, you can pretty much class all renewables, bar large hydo, as unstable sources of supply. The theoretical limit to renewable generation capacity is 20-30% with our current grid architecture. That’s a hard physical fact.
Someone made a suggestion to go to a completely decentralised grid system. It is a good suggestion, however, it would require a completely new power infrastructure to be constructed with it’s own cost and environmental impact. Plus the technology isn’t quite there yet. I’ve also read some models suggesting that a fully decentralised system wastes a large amount of generating capacity which it requires to be fully robust and stable.
Fundamentally, huge capital investments with no payback potential (such as building a power station does – at least you can sell the electricity you produce) are required to completely change the national energy grid system. No one’s going to invest in infrastructure out of their own choice in a privatised energy market.
Even if you do, you’ll still suffer instability in a completely decentralised system because there are different types of load demand. A large proportion of electrical power goes into supplying heavy industry, which has completely different load characteristics than home users. The energy you get from wind is not the same as you get from a coal, oil, gas, or nuclear power station.
For some further reading on this matter, look up these terms: Base Load, Mid Load, and Peak Load.
Posted by Eric 