The Power of Multiples: Connecting Wind Farms Can Make A More Reliable – and Cheaper – Power Source

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.ametsoc.org/amsnews/connectingwindfarms.pdf

AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2007

The Power of Multiples: Connecting Wind Farms Can Make A More Reliable – and Cheaper – Power Source

Wind power, long considered to be as fickle as wind itself, can be groomed to become a steady, dependable source of electricity and delivered at a lower cost than at present, according to scientists at Stanford University.

The key is connecting wind farms throughout a given geographic area with transmission lines, thus combining the electric outputs of the farms into one powerful energy source. The findings are published in the November issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source, according to the study’s authors, Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson. However, because wind is intermittent, it is not used to supply baseload electric power today. Baseload power is the amount of steady and reliable electric power that is constantly being produced, typically by power plants, regardless of the electricity demand. But interconnecting wind farms with a transmission grid reduces the power swings caused by wind variability and makes a significant portion of it just as consistent a power source as a coal power plant.

“This study implies that, if interconnected wind is used on a large scale, a third or more of its energy can be used for reliable electric power, and the remaining intermittent portion can be used for transportation, allowing wind to solve energy, climate and air pollution problems simultaneously,” said Archer, the study’s lead author and a consulting assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and research associate in the Department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution.

...

Editor’s Note: You may contact authors Cristina L. Archer at [phone] or [e-mail] and Mark Jacobson at [phone] or [e-mail] A copy of the paper is online at http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jam.pdf

[soothsayer]

1. where's kenny boy when you need him?

[jpak]

2. No no no no NO! The OpEds in Conrad Black's Financial Times sez it ain't so

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x122400

Just who do these so-called "Standford scientists" and their so-called " Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology" think they are fooling anyway???

Terence and Philip have spoken...

:evilgrin:

[diane in sf]

3. Well Doh! We need to network all our power sources and increase the number of

distributed, small sources. We spent a lot of tax money building our transmission lines (before many were stolen by piratization).

[bananas]

4. They lie!

The paper is NOT at that url!
It's at http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
A couple of other papers are at http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/