Giant Wind Farm for New South Wales

Paul Biggs - Terry McCrann strikes again with more crap. Did he report on this one:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13818689
" France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Once a nuclear plant is built and running, the power station doesn't emit greenhouse gases. But as summers in Europe get hotter, an unexpected hitch has emerged. Many French reactors have had trouble operating during hot spells."

So what happens when it gets hot and the reactors have to shut down Paul? I guess their neighbours will have to supply the power as they do anyway for the peaking power that has to back up the baseload only nuclear power that comes from Swedish pumped hydro.

So perhaps you can also say:

"When the weather gets hot, power doesn't flow even in France"

However that does not fit with your agenda does it? Also have a look at the size of Denmark and the fact one weather system can cover the entire country.

Ender,

I doubt that the people who are busy building wind farms care about storage in Australia otherwise they would have some systems already.
They hope that wind and price will match long enough to make a profit. Sigh I am just getting to cynical these days.

I think that the 1890s statement is bit rich like everything thermal power stations have developed significantly since that period and still moving forward. Now when were the Dutch using windmills as a source of energy to pump, grind etc.

I am glad to hear that you agree that the wind farms are not effective enough without storage facilities "Wind farms will address the issues with more storage that will make them more despatchable" but it is not despatchable but to be able to be scheduled, that is requirement.

"What the 65% figure is that at different times of the day up to 65% of the current demand can be met by the wind." that could be taken as good winds and low demand. You cannot compare percentage of demand supplied with percentage of maximum capability of energy suppliers. They are not the same animal.

Why pick on wind? To show people that wind is not the salvation of the human race in any mix of generation plant (yet). Nemmco is obviously worried about number of wind farms hence all these reports which will only make (possibly) wind farms a little more predictable but still not scheduled.

Bring on the "Flow Battery".

Ender,

Typically I could not find that reference but I had viewed it when talking about the Ausra so;ar plant.

Your own articles talk about "intermittent" supply and being unable to schedule the plant. Non-scheduled plant has a maximum limit of 30Mw and exception such as wind farms.

The Nemmco handbook under Alternative energy refers to wind energy plant having up to 50% variability in a 5 minute dispatch. http://www.nemmco.com.au/nemgeneral/000-0187.pdf

The Esperance plant is interesting. You have 2 wind farms but still use inefficient quick response gas turbines(ICCG are efficient because they combine gas turbine, boiler and steam turbine). The figures given 5.6 Mw for wind farm and 30 Mw for gas turbines but no Esperance demand is shown except 22% with a maximum of 65% penetration(if I am reading the wind farm brochure correctly). If it is 65% of load supplied by the wind farm (not including the gas plant???) that shows Esparences load is approx 9 Mw(if I am reading the windfarm brochure correctly).

So wind farms are still intermittent, still require fossil fuel back up and cannot be classed as a reliable power source. Indeed you cannot even rely on it to be peaking plant because they on the whole do not store the power in low cost periods/wind blows when other sources would be used by the market (as it exists today).

I definitely prefer an Ausra type plant (more predictable) to wind farms and at this stage I don't see that changing.

Peter - "Wind energy is unreliable to the extent that NEMMCO regards wind energy as a drop in demand/load i.e they don't consider the farms as generators in the forecasting of generation capability."

I would like to see the reference for that. You need to read this working paper entitled "Intermittent Generation in the National Electricity Market"
http://www.nemmco.com.au/dispatchandpricing/260-0001.pdf
Nowhere in this document is regarded in a drop in demand.

Also you have to be careful about what type of turbines you are talking about. Vesta's turbines, for instance, are constant speed units that spin at such a speed using gearboxs to generate the required frequency (50hz) which is why this document goes on so much about frequency and voltage control. The huge advantage of constant speed turbines is that they do not need electronics to produce grid voltage as they directly produce it. This is a lot cheaper and before IGBTs became common and cheap this was the only way of generating grid voltage economically.

Newer turbines are called variable speed units. They produce electricity at whatever voltage and frequency that is happening at the time and feed this into power electronics that produce the grid quality electricity. Up until quite recently this has been much more expensive and is why constant speed units were so popular. As variable speed units can produce electricity at an absolutely constant voltage and frequency no matter what the wind is doing they are much more stable than constant speed units. Also the addition of a small ultracapacitor bank ensures that the wind farm can signal the NEMMCO before they drop out. The cappy bank also smooths the output.

Adding more storage to this can make the wind farm able to stabilise the grid however even the tiny amount that is currently in the normal power converters of variable speed turbines can make a dramatic difference to the output of a wind farm.

Only because coal plants cannot vary their output quickly are wind farms an "indulgence". In Esperance where a fast acting gas turbine with advanced Australian designed power controls that interact with the 2 wind farms there, the renewable energy contributes approx 22% of Esperance's yearly demand despite the wind farms being only 15% of the installed capacity. This gives an idea of what can be done once power generation moves beyond 1890.

Davey has the most compelling and most honest argument against wind presented so far.