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Turbine tourism indeed. We need some in NoVa. I know a hilltop or two…

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http://www.windpowertrail.com/

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I just received this release from JMU a few minutes ago:

Wind Energy Experts to Speak at JMU

Dr. Suzanne Tegen of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Bree Raum of the American Wind Energy Association will talk to students about their professional experiences and backgrounds at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, in Room 136 of the ISAT/CS building.

Tegen and Raum also will discuss the employment outlook in the wind energy field. Tegen is an energy analyst with NREL and Raum is manager of a grassroots advocacy program for AWEA as well as treasurer of the organization’s political action committee, WindPAC.

In addition to the guests, Dr. Jon Miles, professor of integrated science and technology at JMU and a founder of the Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative, will speak on the successes of ISAT alumni who are working in the renewable energy field. The presentation will include an overview of federal efforts to move toward the use of alternative energy sources and the subsequent need to support education in science and technology.

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I’m quite serious about this. When I drive to Pittsburgh, I always stop at the Somerset rest area to watch the wind turbines there, which is where I buy my home electricity from (at least the renewable energy certificates). I’m in a position to buy a whole lot more RECs from Highland County for my corporate position. And I do agree with Bill McKibben, that its time for a new perspective and environmental aesthetic regarding wind.

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No, they run a few smaller plants, including several older non-gas fired units.

Here is a list of all of Dominions plants, event he ones not in VA.
http://www.dom.com/about/stations/index.jsp

Good luck digging the details of the 10-K form out of here:
http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?format=PDF&ipage=5244762

Bremo Power Station for instance is only a 250,000 kW unit. Bear in mind that most of these small plants are only equipped with Electrostatic Precipitators as emmission controls devices. What this means is they are much dirtier than newer and larger plants which have to adhere to much tighter emissions standards.

I can guarantee you that the amount of firewood used for home heating is infinitesimal compared to the amount of coal used for power generation.

Allright start with coal plants.. they can be operated as base load or on a peaking demand basis. The typical requirements these days are that the dispatch (people who say hey I need more power) are required to first go to the cleanest available source, and then cascade down from there till projected demand is covered. And even base load plants can be modulated, i.e. they don’t all run at full power or nothing. What is more the case is there is an optimal range for them to run in, and unless they can run in that 20-30% band they don’t run at all.

Typically a coal plant (or most other power plants) have multiple boilers, they can run 1 thru X of them to produce up to the “nameplate” capacity of the facility. Just because the nameplate says 300 Mw, doesn’t mean it has to run at that, usaully it can run a combination of boiler units to achieve different mixes of power as forecasted demand changes.

So dispatch looks at the historical figures, the weather forecast, the power consumption trends and says “OK we need XXXX Mw of genereation for tomorrow, and we think the next day is going to be XX% better/worse”. So based on this forecast they will adjust the baseload calls, and then add in peaking capacity calls to cover expected load. They do this 24 hours in advance, so the peaking plants can come online and match demand loads. One thing to keep in mind… if projected demand is XXXX then they always try and run XXXX +15% or so onto the grid to avoid brownouts. That extra 15% is to cover errors in projected loads, and it all gets dumped in essentially giant toasters called load banks when it is not used.

oh.. and these power calls include hour by hour generation requirements, so all powerplants aren’t running at full power all the time. It’s tailored to meet expected loads by hour.

So what does all this have to do with Wind?

Well before a project moves forward, you put up some met towers to collect data on the site. This data is used to map out the wind patterns for a site over 1-2 years. From this data an analyst will make a wind rose, basically it’s a pretty over head view of the site and it visually shows the data representing wind speeds and directions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_rose

From this you can estimate how to optimize the turbine arrays to maximize power production on a site. After this all the turbine locations are modelled and optimal placement is determined. It’s at this time that all setbacks to sensitive wildlife issues (nests, breeding grounds, etc) and houses, roads, or other items (some projects have to be sited around old missile silos in Colorado).

After the final siting arrangements are worked out, the projected power generation is estimated.

After construction and startup you can begin to reconcile actual generation figures and projections. So over time you can develop a really good model of the wind farms power producing capacity. You can correspond weather, time of year, etc and begin to make accurate projections of capacity for the following day, etc. So the wind farm will call into the power company and say “we think we’ll generate X (usually a minimum) tomorrow, and XX the day after.”

Now since this is a renewable source, it gets priority on the grid, and the power purchase agreement between the wind farm and the utility stipulates that. So the wind farms projected power is used first, and “base load” and peaking plants are given calls to make up the difference.

So yes, wind is variable, but over time we can predict production, and use that to alter the baseloads and peaking plants to cover requirements. The old argument of “We can’t build wind turbines because we still need backup power plants” is crap. The backup power already exists, we just displace it while we generate.

Oh and peak production for wind is usually in times of greatest thermal energy changes. So winter and summer are the peak seasons for wind, more sun, larger temperature differentials, more fronts, etc. = more wind.

We always did turbine repairs and maintenance on the shoulder seasons, aka spring and fall.

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Are 80-150MW plants you are referencing gas, peaking plants? Aren’t these used on demand to supplement periods of high energy need? Would a wind development offer the same convenience? I’m assuming you would need this most during the hot summer months. How reliable is wind then?

I would hesitate to bump this up to .2% since it includes so many types of fuel sources. I’m not sure if wood includes an estimate of home use. What is the thermal efficiency of a wood insert, for example? To me, it could get pretty complicated especially without knowing more of what is included.

It seems like the coal estimate would be more accurate.

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