Electrical energy past and future

Almost everyone wants to charge their car when they get home from work.
When there is little solar energy, Maybe we can mandate nightshift hours as a remedy.

 

I see no need to burn that bridge this long before we get anywhere near to reaching it. The existing grid can handle very much more nighttime charging before it becomes an issue. Then, when shifting supply and demand make that an issue, TOU pricing can push demand around the clock as appropriate.

The hydro (still the primary source in my region) and wind have little to no correlation to daylight. Diurnal leveling of the hydro would even be less destructive to the fish spawning and riverbanks than the existing unnatural fluctuations. Hydro pumped storage -- off the rivers and away from the fish habitat -- could also do the same function expected from the upcoming batteries.

 

Actually it is pretty easy:

• sell farm equipment that is electrically powered
• provide local plug services from wind turbines

The farmers in my family would replace fossil fueled equipment in a heart-beat and sell the excess as a second crop. Rural electrification would have a strong reason to upgraded and include redundant grid access.

Bob Wilson

 

The farm equipment in my family runs at a very low annual duty cycle, but when put to use is run fairly hard. It seems that during the rollout phase where good batteries are expensive, they should first be put to applications with a much more steady annual usage pattern, such as commuter car(pool)s and transit buses. Put off the seasonal and intermittent use items until later.

Encouraging farmers to put up turbines and solar equipment to feed the local grids is a separate matter. Dad's barn roofs are not well oriented, but the machine shed roof is almost perfect, and is vastly larger than needed to power the farm itself. And it suffers much less tree and winter cloud interference than my Puget Sound home. I've been eyeballing it for several years, but between lack of incentives there and increasing elder care issues, that PV project is low on the priority list.

 

A car, no matter the fuel, is many times more convenient than a horse. Many still believe plug ins are less convenient than an ICE only car at this point. I hope for faster adoption, but don't expect it.

This is when wind tends to pick up.

Electric source aside, the time most plug ins will start charging is the time most air conditioners will be going off. Balancing the load on the grid to some degree.

We have an electric snow blower that works well for most snowfalls here, without the bother of ICE maintenance. it is corded, but then again, some of the largest mining equipment is too.

For livestock farms and feed lots, bio-methane for generators is also another option.

 

I've been impressed by how during the day, convective heating tends to bring 'wind' to the surface but at night, the same wind can blow at modest altitudes, 500-1000 ft, with hardly a breeze on the surface. This led to one interesting night landing many years ago when the head wind disappeared a couple of hundred feet above the surface.

Bob Wilson

 

So you were suddenly short of airspeed, somewhat like (but less severe than) the crash incidents from airliners going through wind shear or microbursts?

 

Correct. I was landing at night at Hyde Field:

• Notice the high tension lines about 1/4 mile North of the runway.
• At the time, the runway lights were from the first taxiway exit by North end FBO hanger.
• The northern section of the runway is about 2 meters lower with a slope up to the first taxiway. In daylight, touching down on the numbers and then the upslope was an effective way to slow the plane, nicely.

It was a night flight North from Norfolk just after a front had passed. A clear, winter night, we had a +60 mph tailwind. As I was letting down from altitude, I was at risk of hitting the TCA limit for the notch to Hyde field. So I did a 180 into the wind to continue descending and on a lark, dropped the flaps and slowed the airspeed to 55 mph . . . all relative motion stopped. The ground lights were fixed as we were 'elevator' descending. Upon reaching the TCA limit, I lowered the nose, dumped the flaps and did a 180 to Hyde ... vertigo!

I quickly switched to the artificial horizon and instruments and the vertigo passed within half a minute. It was seeing the ground lights 'misbehaving' that triggered the vertigo. Everything was fine by the time I entered downwind; crabbed the cross wind, and; 1/8th mile North of the power lines, turned on final.

As I was on final, full flaps, holding 60 mph into what had been about a 60 mph headwind my landing light had just illuminated the runway where the landing lights started. Then I noticed it was 'wandering' and quickly looked at the airspeed, <55 mph, HOLY CARP!

I knew the runway well (I trained there) so I lowered the nose, acquired the end of the runway, and flared just beyond the numbers where the slope began. Yes, I flared and touched down at the base of an up slope so we slowed down ... real quick. Had I dumped the flaps and braked hard, I might have turned off at the first taxiway. Instead, we went to the next taxiway and back to our hanger space.

Bob Wilson

 

I speaking mainly from experience, mostly from the beach, where constant wind tends to pick up speed in the late afternoon to evening. But it appears peak wind speed to time of day is a location variable.
https://infosys.ars.usda.gov/WindErosion/symposium/proceedings/vining.pdf

Returning to the point of my original post. it is possible for grid planners to balance the slack output and unavailability of solar by siting wind generation at locations where the general wind speeds will mean peak output during those times.

 

This is very typical, and the phenomenon is known as "decoupling." It is the result of a surface-based nocturnal inversion.

The decoupled boundary layer/inversion tends to deepen overnight and maxes out around sunrise, when, as you noted, surface heating eventually causes mixing between the boundary layer and the free atmosphere (troposphere.)

 

DAS, @34, california's wind isn't well levalized, but it is so small it doesn't really matter. California has a problem needing more grid improvement and shutting down steam natural gas generation, and building more cycling ccgt natural gas, which would probably reduce rates and ghg more than its solar push, which will get more and more wasted in the future, if changes are not made. California solar + wind record high at 49.2%, renewable electricity peaks above 56% | Electrek

Places to look at wind is where wind makes much more of the grid - Texas, Denmark, Germany, China. In texas coastal wind and western wind don't peak at the same time, and there is plenty of cycling ccgt to make up slack when the wind doesn't blow (well since 2011, but who knows we should build more for more latitude for hotter summers, when ENSO turns against the state again. Texas is exploring using batteries to handle quick bursts of wind, and allow ccgt time to spin up when the wind stops suddenly. Often night wind electricity is free in west texas, as the grid is too congested to move it, but upgrades are being made.

Denmark now produces over 100% of their needs many hours of the year. This is fairly illusory though. Its a small place and sells the excess wind to Germany and Sweden.

Germany seems to be doing the most, around 30% of electricity is renewable. How does it balance. Germany has more modern coal plants than the US, and these cycle like texas's natural gas plants. It has a better grid than the US too. This does make power much more expensive in germany.

China is growing the most wind. It has a lot of coal, that is not as advanced as Germany's. What that means is china is curtailing wind when it is over peak. This still is often the least expensive choice.

 

Curious about the cost per kWh of wind generated electricity, I went to the "USA Energy Information Administration." I found technical articles about capital and fuel costs but no clear answer. It will take a while to digest. But I ended looking at cents per kWh: EIA - Electricity Data

• 24.89 - Pacific Noncontiguous (29.39 Hawaii)
• 19.28 - New England
• 15.75 - Middle Atlantic
• 14.54 - Pacific Contiguous
  
• 12.97 - East North Central
• 11.96 - South Atlantic
• 11.37 - Mountain
  
• 11.24 - East South Central
• 11.10 - West North Central
  
• 10.96 - West South Central

I would have thought Hawaii would have gone heavily into wind, solar, and ocean power sources. But Hawaii needs discussion another day.

It was @bisco who first turned me on to electrical miles being more expensive than gasoline miles. So I'm really curious about New England with Mount Washington and an abundance of hills and mountains. I thought New England would have great wind resources. Yes, I had read about the Cape Cod, off shore wind farm, and reports (more gossip) about people who objected. How have they avoided harvesting the wind?

Bob Wilson

 

i am seeing more and more public solar installations on baron land, such as our retired landfill, but there are many more objections to wind power. typically, 'unsightly', 'deadly to birds', 'health concerns', 'noisy', and the list goes on. or at best, 'nimby'.

 

Bob, cost of wind is difficult. Do you count the grid upgrades necessary? If not it is about $1M-$2.2M per MW. One nice thing is it scales easily once the grid is extended to windy areas, you can easily add 1MW at a time. EIA estimates 2016 average was $1.6M, and $47,000/year for maintenance. If you levelize for 30 years, that's about 3.3 cents/kwh. With interest and profits maybe 5 cents per kwh. But to get to customers often there is grid build out, and profit on the grid. In texas that makes it about 10 cents/kwh. Its probably cheaper in Iowa, and more in California. I'm sure bisco would love it if that is all he paid, but there is not very good on shore wind in Massachusetts, and it needs more grid upgrades and different regulation to get to the cheaper stuff.

Hawaii, has other problems. You need to maintain and supply for small islands with expensive shipped in fuel. They could probably go 80% renewable, but its got to be a government program to figure out how to do it equitably, and how to charge for the grid upgrades and the fuel and maintenance necessary to provide reliability.
3 Reasons Hawaii Put the Brakes on Solar--and Why the Same Won&#39;t Happen in Your State - Scientific American Blog Network