Why bother with wasteful wind?
Let’s try to understand wind power.
Every wind farm needs backup generators to supply power when the wind fails.
If there is no wind, zero electricity is produced by the turbines and all power comes from the backup generators (mainly coal or gas in Australia).
If wind speed exceeds design capacity, the turbines are shut down to prevent damage, and all power comes from the backup generators.
In freezing still air, the wind turbines take electricity from the backup generators to prevent damage from cold. And they draw power to get reconnected.
(Image: Flynt/Bigstockphoto.com)When the wind blows strongly all over the wind farm, the grid may not be able to cope with the surge in supply so some turbines may be paid to close down, producing no electricity.
And on those rare occasions when a steady wind in the right place produces just the right amount of power to supply the demand at that time, the backup generators produce no useful power but waste fuel to maintain “spinning reserve” and to ramp up and down when the wind fluctuates.
Now we find that wind power probably increases the production of carbon dioxide (not that this matters).
One question.
Why not scrap the wind turbines and produce a steady supply of low cost power from the backup generators?
Viv Forbes is chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition. He has a degree in Applied Science and has spent his career in the mining, farming, energy and investment industries, with many positions from rouseabout, to investment manager, to chairman of the board. He has lived in Canberra and has worked for state and federal public services. He is now semi-retired. He is a non-executive director of a small Australian coal explorer.
Actually, the point of wind power is that it is partially replacing dispatchable load from dirty sources like coal fired plants as well as provide the benefits of off peak load for charging EVs overnight. Storage is only utilized when time shifting or peak smoothing is required and a 1:1 ratio of MW of storage for MW of wind deployed is not necessary, nor has that much storage ever been deployed. Additionally, wind is used in conjunction with hydro and other renewables to load balance so that if the wind drops out. If wind is”overproducing” the GTs can turndown in order to balance load as well, so storage would not be necessary. With accurate wind prediction this type of grid management is entirely possible today. Cost of energy for wind is now competitive with coal and natural gas. Time to wake up to the facts.