Utilities Breeze Through Wind Energy Integration
June 30th, 2009
Food and energy production at the 74 MW Blue Canyon Wind Farm near Lawton, OK, consisting of 45 Vestas NM72 1.65 MW turbines.
Critics of wind power often dismiss its value because of its variability, as in “what do you do when the wind stops blowing?” This lame argument only applies for small-scale isolated systems. The wind is always blowing somewhere. The success of utility-scale wind energy rests with integration of windfarms dispersed over large geographic areas with transmission lines in place to carry the power to markets that need it. Wind forecasting also plays a key role as grid operators blend wind power with other generating sources.
Last year, the U.S. wind energy industry built 8,435 MW of new generating capacity, enough to power more than 2 million homes. Forty-percent of the nation’s new power-producing capacity was wind power.
Currently, the U.S. has wind power generating capacity of 25,246 MW, enough electricity to power 7 million households. It does so cleanly, without burning coal, without mountaintop removal, without filling stream valleys with coal mine overburden, without polluting the air with mercury and other toxins, without pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, without having store billions of gallons of coal sludge, without digging for uranium, without uranium enrichment, without worrying about greater nuclear proliferation, without having to figure out where to store nuclear waste, without paying sky-high fuel prices on the roller-coaster spot market, and without pumping millions of gallons of cooling water through thermo-electric power plants.
Renewable Energy World has the article here. An excerpt:
A document prepared by the Utility Wind Integration Group in coordination with the trade associations of all three utility sectors (investor-owned, public and cooperative), along with utility studies and wind-integration experiences found that:
*Wind resources’ impacts can be managed through proper plant interconnection, integration, transmission planning and system and market operations.
*System operating cost increases caused from wind variability and uncertainty amount to about 10 percent or less of wind energy’s wholesale value.
*A variety of tools, such as commercially available wind forecasting, can be employed to reduce costs.
*In many cases, customers’ electricity costs can be reduced when wind is added to the system because operating-cost increases are offset by savings that arise from displacing fossil fuel generation.
Based on studies and surveys it conducted in different parts of the country, the Utility Wind Integration Group said, “(These studies) lay to rest one of the major concerns often expressed about wind power: that a wind plant would need to be backed up with an equal amount of dispatchable generation.”
Wind energy is rapidly maturing as a mainstream power generating source. As a counter force to nuclear and fossil fuel interest groups, it’s up to supporters of renewable energy to keep pressure on the politicians so that pro-renewable policies are strengthened, not rolled back.









