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re: Wind Power Production Drops Despite 6.2GW of Added Capacity
Posted on 5/1/24 at 9:38 pm to PikesPeak
Posted on 5/1/24 at 9:38 pm to PikesPeak
quote:
I wouldn't go that far.
If that graph took into account the massive wind and solar tax incentives and subsidies it would look very different. Just from a basic understanding of power it also doesn't make sense - every wind and solar project must be backed by baseload since it does not maintain a capacity near nameplate. To translate that, every solar and wind installation needs reserve capacity and that is usually picked up by redundant natural gas generation.
quote:
The power grid is not rated high enough, storage isn’t more widespread, substations are undersized to handle the demand, etc.
Utility storage batteries will not be the saving grace by any means unless some breakthrough happens. With the capacities that exist now, we are talking minutes or hours more of backup power for costs of billions of dollars. So if we double utility battery storage our capacity goes from 2 hours to 4 hours? That won't even make a dent in what is required on the grid and will cost billions. And when weather gets bad, you'll see a lot of nothing from it. Here is the energy mix in Texas during a cold front back in February.
And I wouldn't consider alternatives to be very weather resilient either.
quote:
If utilities had substations sized more capably, more modern transmission lines with less losses, more integrated storage systems, they could take in more generation and distribute, causing less stress on the systems, removing the need for a rolling blackout.
This I will certainly agree with. A lot of the transformers and substations are starting to get near the end of their service life in areas. And we are looking at lead times of multiple years for large power transformers. Even pole mount single phase transformers are out almost a year right now. This is going to become a problem regardless of how much the US ramps up its own production. Grain-oriented steel is primarily made in China and is critical for building transformer cores.
But again, we come back full circle to the original topic for new generation. Invest money where you get the most energy density and biggest return on energy investment. Unfortunately we are not going that direction and we will continue to have problems similar to Germany. California will be first.
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