Windmill Boom Curbs Electric Power Prices for RWE (Update2) - Bloomberg.com Now the utilities should push for electric cars to suck up all of that excess night power.
Hi All, Shutting down coal plants is not the real problem. The problemis the wind could stop blowing in an instant. There are two solutions mentioned in the article. One is to link the wind energy into a usage network where it is not a large fraction of the power generated. Then the range of power fluctuation is within the throttling capability of the traditional methods. This is a short term solution however, as eventually, wind power will be allot more. The other solution is storage. Using the wind energy to pump water uphill and then run hydro at a steady rate is mentioned. This gives a buffer between the usage and the production. I know of a nice bluf off the Illinois river where this would be just the perfect site for. Put a big ground level water tank farm on top of the bluff and pump water up there. Then run the water down hill on calm days...
i wonder how that translates in cents/kwh for the residential consumer? anybody in texas have any info?
There are very few places suitable for hydro storage, and batteries are expensive. The best answer is more and longer interconnections so that there will always be producers and consumers within reach. I don't think it's related to developments in West Texas (because increased transmission capacity is still being built) but Green Mountain Energy just reduced our 100% wind power rate in North Texas to $0.135 per kW-hr.
The reality is the wind doesn't "stop blowing in an instant" generally. When you have enough turbine scattered over a big enough area, predictability, at least in the short term gets better. Water storage has some limited uses, but it is not a terribly efficient energy use. To be really useful you need huge amounts of water, with significant elevation. Hydro needs large head/lower volume, or lower head higher volume to be effective.
ouch. down from what? wind power that you opt for? what is standard power cost? we're paying 8.5 cents. the article made it sound like all (average?) power rates wer coming down.
This article refers to a study indicating how a good transmission network allows the variability to be dramatically decreased. The article uses a hamster analogy. (I wonder how much electricity all wheel turning rodents could generate) I've recently seen references to compressed air energy storage (CAES) as a possibility. I haven't read enough yet to know how efficient it really enough or how well it scales.
Wind can be forcasted somewhat and when you add a large bank of EV's charging you could have some of them turn off thier charging (not add power back in to the grid) to level the grid or allow a power plant to come online (1 hour delay of EV not charging). EV owners would get a lower rate and face no extra battery wear. This could be done with no impact to the EV owner if computers were used, only allow charging to be stopped on cars that will achieve full charge hours early before they would probably be needed. Sodium sulfur batteries are one of the better types of batteries for utility grade storage that could be used to smooth wind power or allow for startup of other power sources. Sodium-sulfur battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We had been paying as much as $0.176 per kW-hr (on the margin, excluding user fees and local taxes), depending on the season. Even in Texas wind hasn't been cheap. The average any-old-source rate locally is about $0.12 per kW-hr.
The utilities have been pushing for EVs since the beginning. No worries on that end! At a minimum, we need to stop building more. Nah. Not really. It is an intermittent source certainly. That's why we need EVs to store it when it is available. Let's use the batteries that we'll have built into all our cars. Bingo. Already demonstrated several times. Fact of the matter is, EVs will increase the rate of adoption of these intermittent "green" energy sources that we're bringing online. EVs are rolling energy storage devices.
its there. its free (after construction and maintenance) "fuel" and yes, in this world, there are people who do not participate in the inconvenience of clipping coupons or filing for rebates. i am not one of those people. i will take free anyday. lets bring it on!!
. . . even if they funnel it back into more windmills, or geothermal, or hydro, nuke, etc, it'll be some time before the new projects get under way, what with environmental studies, planning etc. And how do new mills cut prices? Giant multi-million dollar mills are usually paid for via future production. I don't get it.
