McIntyre's talk in London – Plus, the UK's tilting at windmills may actually increase CO2 emissions over natural gas

I suppose it would be useless to point out to richardscourtney, and his various supporters, who evidently also fervently believe that
“And the windfarms contribute no useful electricity to the grid at any time.” [note, this is the verbatim statement from richardscourtney, bold in the original. – R Sowell]
that, as I write this at 10:15 p.m., California’s grid operator reports approximately 2,700 MW is generated from wind-power in the state. Furthermore, the Castaic Lake Power Station consumes approximately 1,500 MW when pumping water at night up into Pyramid Lake, a regular occurrence as a long-standing practice of pumped storage hydroelectric.
I am quite sure that richardscourtney must be correct in his hotly defended statement, and the wind power from the nearby wind farms, Tehachapi, and Banning Pass, are contributing nothing at all to those six big motor/generators, rated at 250 MW each, which turn the pumps to send the water back up the mountain. Yes, that must be true, as the power is wind-generated, the wind farms are connected to the grid, and 10:15 p.m. Is indeed, part of ” at any time.”
Since richardscourtney tells us that the grid benefits not at all from wind-generated electricity (“no useful electricity”), those Castaic motors that consume roughly 1,500 MW must be obtaining their power from another source, perhaps the shut-down nuclear power plant a few miles away at San Onofre.
Yes, those two cold and shut down nuclear reactors could be the source. I’m so relieved that richardscourtney has corrected everyone on the effect of wind power on a grid.
For a moment there, I thought that Califilornia has actually found an effective and economic way to time-shift a good part of the night-time wind-generated electricity into useful peaking grid power.
Silly me.
Sarcasm intended.

@ur momisugly Roger Sowell
Yes, your numbers confirm that wind power doesn’t contribute useful energy to the grid.

wind power prediction accuracy depends on time horizon. 1 hour ahead it is very accurate, 1 day ahead less so. the fact that the wind speed and wind power are nonlinear is a red herring. it doesn’t make prediction difficult. the wind->power transfer function is well known for wind turbines. if you can predict the wind, then you can predict the wind power.
and if you can predict wind power, you can schedule electricity generation for it when the wind power drops. OCGT, CCGT or anything else. ramp up and down times for the scheduled generation are important, that is why discussion of the unpredictability of wind is irrelevant unless discussing over what time horizon.
wind power prediction is not perfect, but will get much better over time.

ps you can see a nice illustration of the contributions of the various electricity producers in the UK here
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html (best in google chrome)
you can also see that wind power ramps up and down quite slowly compared to CCGT and coal power. obviously that rate of change will be higher the higher the total wind on the grid.

Roger Sowell says:
August 18, 2012 at 10:10 am
For those who fervently believe that only open-cycle gas turbine generators can follow a grid’s load, it must be true then that the grid loads were constant before about 1940. Surely, no coal, nor oil, nor gas-fired steam plant could accomplish the task
All steam boilers have something called a ‘ramp rate’. As a general rule, those boilers that ‘run the hottest’ are the ‘most efficient’. This is based on well known laws of thermodynamics.
The fundamental problem in materials science has been for a very long time(longer then my lifetime) to find materials that will ‘run hot’ while still maintaining the necessary flexibility to endure frequent rapid thermal expansion/contraction cycles.
This is why your automobile engine only runs at 20% efficiency. We know how to design internal combustion engines that run at 50+% efficiency since the at least as far back as the 1970’s, but they end up cracking after a few days of normal driving.
Thermal Power plants built in the 1940’s generally ran at about 25% thermal efficiency, while the best ‘base load’ plants today get in excess of 40% thermal efficiency and combined cycle plants run at base load approach 60% thermal efficiency.
Wind does ‘ramp’ up and down relatively quickly…sometimes it ramps in the opposite direction of load. I.E. The wind stops blowing just as people are getting up and starts blowing just as people are going to bed. This means thermal power plants have to potentially ramp twice as fast as before.
If you want an energy efficient grid then load following with hydro is the preferred method. This is why the 2020 Chinese renewables plan(the best thought out plan in the world) calls for 400 GW of hydro and 200GW of wind. Once you get beyond a ratio of 2 parts water to 1 part wind then you end up having to run your thermal plants at reduced efficiency which adds to CO2 emissions.
In Europe, the ‘hydro load following resources’ are already ‘over subscribed’, just as they are in the US Pacific Northwest. The people who were saying ‘how great windmills are’ when the first few were tied into European and and Pacific Northwest Hydro resources were telling the truth.
Geographic separation of the windmills will have some ‘averaging effect’….but anyone who watches CAISO and Bonneville wind generation figures will tell you that a 1,000 mile north/south separation is ‘insufficient geographic separation’ which is why windmills are being built in Montana East of the Rocky Mountains and tied into the Bonneville/CAISO grids.
Unfortunately, high voltage DC lines capable of 5 GW transmission capacity cost about $2 million per mile to build.

wind power needs backing up by conventional power stations. it does #NOT# need to be running or consuming fuel. wind power is inherently predictable (though not perfectly) but far more predictable than conventional power. in the UK we have 2GW of spinning reserve in case a couple of large power stations fall off the grid. we have no and need no extra back up for the wind.

All of the disadvantages of wind power can be seen in any uncontrollable power generation source. They all, in effect, force the grid to pay for the power practically twice : once to the windmill owner and once to those maintaining the backup power generator. This is true irregardless of whether that backup generator must idle or instead has enough excess capacity to handle any lapses in wind in the course of its normal operation – that’s because any output that it’s not called upon to produce (because the wind is supplying it) , means that the plant functioning as the backup is now operating at a lower capacity and therefore its power has to cost more per kilowatthour – while it saves on fuel not being used, there are other operating costs that remain more or less constant , regardless of how much power it generates, and now those costs must be spread over fewer kilowatthours of product,. A new nuclear plant can eliminate a large coal plant entirely, but no amount of uncontrollable power can ever allow for the closure of a single conventional plant. And having all the windmills linked together doesn’t solve anything – it’s not a matter of wind or no wind, but of how much – no such network can make any guarantees to any of its members of constant power of a given magnitude. But to avoid backup capacity requires such guarantees. Uncontrollable power is simply worth far less than controllable power.

Roger Sowell says:
August 18, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I suppose it would be useless to point out to richardscourtney, and his various supporters, who evidently also fervently believe that [blah blah blah]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sir, that entire rant speaks to the economics and efficiencies under discussion. You egregious comment upthread accused richardscourtney of making a statement that violated the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. By providing us with your lengthy response regarding efficiencies and economica you have tacitly admitted that these are exactly what richardscourtney was saying in the first place, and that you know full well that your accusation was a blatant falsehood.
You how him an apology, or we are left to assume that you are the type of person who simply throws blatant falsehoods around hoping that they will stick. Everything you write will be read in that context.