Reply With Quote
Yep.
So, what are you going to do about it?
Have fun with your half wit remarks.
July 19, 2008
Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project
By KATE GALBRAITH
Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.
The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.
The project will ease a bottleneck that has become a major obstacle to development of the wind-rich Texas Panhandle and other areas suitable for wind generation.
Texas is already the largest producer of wind power, with 5,300 installed megawatts — more than double the installed capacity of California, the next closest state. And Texas is fast expanding its capacity.
“This project will almost put Texas ahead of Germany in installed wind,” said Greg Wortham, executive director of the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium.
Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.
Details of the plan will be completed by Aug. 15, according to Damon Withrow, director of government relations at the Public Utility Commission, which voted 2 to 1 to go ahead with the transmission plan. The lines will not be fully constructed until 2013.
Wind developers reacted favorably.
“The lack of transmission has been a fundamental issue in Texas, and it’s becoming more and more of an issue elsewhere,” said Vanessa Kellogg, the Southwest regional development director for Horizon Wind Energy, which operates the Lone Star Wind Farm in West Texas and has more wind generation under development. “This is a great step in the right direction.”
Ms. Kellogg said that the project would be a boon for Texas power customers, whose electricity costs have risen in conjunction with soaring natural gas prices across the state. “There’s nothing volatile about the wind in terms of the price, because it’s free,” she said.
The Texas office of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen also lauded the news.
“We think it’s going to lower costs, lower pollution and create jobs. We think that for every $3 invested, we’ll probably see about an $8 reduction in electric costs,” said Tom Smith, the state director.
The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.
“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators” to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Bab & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider. “We’ve reached that point in West Texas.”
Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas oilman who plans to build what has been called the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle, welcomed the announcement.
But because about a quarter of the Pickens project capacity will come online by 2011, two years before the Texas lines are fully ready, “we will move forward with plans to build our own transmission,” he said.
Lack of transmission is a severe problem in a number of states that, like Texas, want to develop their wind resources.
Wind now accounts for 1 percent of the nation’s electricity generation but could rise to 20 percent by 2030, according to a recent Department of Energy report, if transmission lines are built and other challenges met.
But other states may find the Texas model difficult to emulate. The state is unique in having its own electricity grid. All other states fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy to any transmission proposals.
The exact route of the transmission lines has yet to be determined because the state has not yet acquired right-of-way, according to Mr. Withrow of the utility commission.
The project will almost certainly face concerns from landowners reluctant to have wires cutting across their property. “I would anticipate that some of these companies will have to use eminent domain,” he said, speaking of the companies that will be building the transmission lines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/bu...gewanted=print
==========
The future begins to take shape. Somehow I don't see electricity bills dropping in 2013.
Yep.
So, what are you going to do about it?
Have fun with your half wit remarks.
We got our own grid, es!
Yep on T. Bones Pickens done did his thing in Texas. Now all we have to do is build a back-up for the windmills so when they aint working we still got the same amount of power. Or you forgot about that? Otherwise when wind aint blowing you can still work and run those a/c's and tv's. Wind power is what it is. Wind.
Ever heard of batteries?
The caliber of our posters is shown by ElNono. What a brain.
Can you read?
Utility Will Use Batteries to Store Wind Power
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: September 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 — American Electric Power, a coal-burning utility company that is looking for ways to connect more wind power to its grid, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will install huge banks of high-technology batteries.
The batteries are costly and their use at such a big scale has not been demonstrated, but they may be an essential complement to renewable power, experts say.
“We’re looking at what we believe the grid of the future is going to be,” said Carl L. English, president of A.E.P. “We’re going to need a significant amount of storage if for no other reason than to take greatest advantage of alternative energy sources like wind power.”
The investment would position the company well if any of the 11 states in its service territory establish a minimum quota for renewable energy, or if Congress sets a national standard, company executives said; it would also help if carbon controls were ins uted and wind power were to gain a financial advantage over coal.
An expert not involved in the program, Edgar DeMeo of Renewable Energy Consulting Services, said, “They must think there’s enough potential there so they want get a better handle on how it works.” But Mr. DeMeo and others said that wind energy had substantial room to grow before storage became necessary.
American Electric Power’s batteries will be used to smooth the power delivery from wind turbines. They can charge at night, when the wind is strong but prices are low, and give the electricity back the next afternoon, when there is hardly any wind but power prices are many times higher, company officials said. That strategy would reduce the amount of power generated from inefficient peak-demand units.
The batteries can also insert energy into the grid during brief voltage drops, reducing the chance of a blackout and stabilizing the grid for all users. They may also delay or eliminate the need for transmission upgrades in some areas, the company said.
At least at this stage, saving money by storing a windmill’s production for peak-price hours will be difficult. The cost is very high, $27 million for six megawatts of capacity, or about $4,500 a kilowatt, including the price of substation improvements. Building a gas turbine of that size to meet peak needs would cost substantially less. But the battery system would be able to store power made from wind, a form of generation that does not produce any carbon dioxide.
The batteries can each deliver one megawatt of power — enough to run a medium-size shopping center — for a little more than seven hours. Replenished nightly, they give back about 80 percent of the electricity put into them. Each is the size of a double-decker bus, and installation is not permanent; they can be moved to another site as the need arises.
The batteries will be built by NGK Insulators Ltd. of Japan. They use a sodium sulfur chemistry and operate at temperatures of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
And while the batteries are large by the standards of previous installations, they are small relative to wind production; one battery would hold about as much energy as a single large wind machine could produce in a day, Mr. DeMeo pointed out. And they are small relative to total energy demand.
But, he said, “If we ever really do get cheap storage, and that’s a possibility, that’s a game changer.”
A.E.P. intends to have 1,000 megawatts of energy storage on its system in the next decade, according to the company, and at least 25 megawatts from batteries of this type.
A range of options is available for the remainder of the storage, including the use of plug-in hybrid cars, Mr. English said. The idea behind plug-in hybrids is that the owner of a car would charge the batteries every night when demand and cost of electricity were low. The next day, under a contract between the utility company and the driver, the car would be left plugged when not in use, and the power company could reverse the flow of electricity and draw power out of its batteries during times of peak demand. Enough power would be left in the batteries to start the engine, so that a driver returning to a drained car could still run it on gasoline until the batteries could be charged again at night. It would take more than 1,000 such vehicles to equal one of the sodium-sulfur batteries, however.
LINK
2.5% for these batteries for the storage of total 1000 Mw.
So what's the storage technology for the other 97.5%?
Batteries for wind/solar storage at grid-scale or utlility-scale don't look very feasible with current technology.
Yeah ElNono. That would prove very interesting. Huge banks of high-technology batteries. They would definitely be that. Hugh and Hi-tech. And as far as I know never tried as stated in the article. It may happen one of these days. But it isn't anything that will occur in the immediate future.
Well, that article is 2 years old. And obviously an utility was investing on it. Now, I won't argue with you that the technology might not be there just yet (I just haven't followed it to know how they're doing), but things like this are always looked into. All of these utilities have a vested interest of cashing in on cheap electricity generation, and they sure as heck want to sell every kw they produce. Storage of excess energy is going to be a must.
so this is a good thing for us right?
It's true that in general, you still need other power plants (or energy efficiency) to meet peak demand periods. The thing is, they run a lot less of the time, using less fuel and emitting less greenhouse gases.
Wind power is readily available, affordable and abundant. Along with energy efficiency, it should be one of the first steps we take to respond to the threat of global warming.
For an authoritative look at what wind power can do, see the 20% by 2030 Technical Report from the U.S. Department of Energy at www.20percentwind.org.
Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
www.powerofwind.org
www.awea.org
I'm going to make a bundle off of this............hooray!!!!
You really do enjoy sucking that Middle Eastern , don't you?
Dims = blockers!
They could harness the farts coming out of your mouth, old man. That's enough methane to power the entire country.
Does anyone know who to get ahold of to be able to transport the blades to the windmill farms? I heard there is a load of money in transporting the blades?July 19, 2008
Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project
By KATE GALBRAITH
Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.
The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.
The project will ease a bottleneck that has become a major obstacle to development of the wind-rich Texas Panhandle and other areas suitable for wind generation.
Texas is already the largest producer of wind power, with 5,300 installed megawatts — more than double the installed capacity of California, the next closest state. And Texas is fast expanding its capacity.
“This project will almost put Texas ahead of Germany in installed wind,” said Greg Wortham, executive director of the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium.
Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.
Details of the plan will be completed by Aug. 15, according to Damon Withrow, director of government relations at the Public Utility Commission, which voted 2 to 1 to go ahead with the transmission plan. The lines will not be fully constructed until 2013.
Wind developers reacted favorably.
“The lack of transmission has been a fundamental issue in Texas, and it’s becoming more and more of an issue elsewhere,” said Vanessa Kellogg, the Southwest regional development director for Horizon Wind Energy, which operates the Lone Star Wind Farm in West Texas and has more wind generation under development. “This is a great step in the right direction.”
Ms. Kellogg said that the project would be a boon for Texas power customers, whose electricity costs have risen in conjunction with soaring natural gas prices across the state. “There’s nothing volatile about the wind in terms of the price, because it’s free,” she said.
The Texas office of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen also lauded the news.
“We think it’s going to lower costs, lower pollution and create jobs. We think that for every $3 invested, we’ll probably see about an $8 reduction in electric costs,” said Tom Smith, the state director.
The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.
“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators” to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Bab & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider. “We’ve reached that point in West Texas.”
Jay Rosser, a spokesman for Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas oilman who plans to build what has been called the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle, welcomed the announcement.
But because about a quarter of the Pickens project capacity will come online by 2011, two years before the Texas lines are fully ready, “we will move forward with plans to build our own transmission,” he said.
Lack of transmission is a severe problem in a number of states that, like Texas, want to develop their wind resources.
Wind now accounts for 1 percent of the nation’s electricity generation but could rise to 20 percent by 2030, according to a recent Department of Energy report, if transmission lines are built and other challenges met.
But other states may find the Texas model difficult to emulate. The state is unique in having its own electricity grid. All other states fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy to any transmission proposals.
The exact route of the transmission lines has yet to be determined because the state has not yet acquired right-of-way, according to Mr. Withrow of the utility commission.
The project will almost certainly face concerns from landowners reluctant to have wires cutting across their property. “I would anticipate that some of these companies will have to use eminent domain,” he said, speaking of the companies that will be building the transmission lines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/bu...gewanted=print
==========
The future begins to take shape. Somehow I don't see electricity bills dropping in 2013.
I hope they're equipping those turbines with the noise producing technology we use here in Virginia to keep birds and bats away, because wind farms reek havoc on avian populations
I don't think there's any living thing up there in that flat moon-like desolation to kill.
You've obviously never been to west Texas or the panhandle where they are putting in the farms.
Lots of things grow out there
And if you're wearing jeans or a T-shirt, there's a real good chance the cotton was grown in either West Texas or the South Plains
Care to calculate how large a battery facility needs to be to capture the extra power and supply it when the wind's not blowing? Calculate it at the current 1,850 installed megawatts and remember they plan to build more. Then there is the voltage convertion problems between AC to DC and back to DC at such power levels.
Do you really think they will use batteries?
One of the advanatage of solar-thermal over solar-voltaic is that the thermal energy can be stored local to generation (best place for batteries is near to consumption) in high-temp liquid salts for quite a long time, then used to boil water to drive a turbine.
Why not a mixed solar-voltaic and solar-thermal farm, since the major solar-voltaic are in the southwest with high number of sunny days?
Put a load in El Paso.
Wind never stops blowing in that god forsaken place.
I grew up in West Texas. When I took my wife there for the first time (She's from Minnesota), she thought it was ground zero at a nuke testing range.
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