Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind to Water | 22 comments (22 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

First some nitpicking: average wind speed tells you little about power output. The latter you get by a weighted average. Also, considering today's turbines which stand 80 meters or higher, the 50-m wind maps aren't a good indicator of on-shore potential (I indicated this in my own US potential calculation a month or two ago) - nor of the off-shore potential with large off-shore turbines even if placed low (say a 100 m rotor diameter turbine atop a 60 m tower).

I also note that a less enviromentally-risky alternative to pumped storage is just variable hydropower output - already practised at some places in Scandinavia.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 05:20:40 AM EST

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

BTW, could you reproduce your calculation for the Michigan electricity balance?

Also, could you show a seasonal power curve for that region? To my knowledge, in Nordic countries, winter can also be the season with higher demand, due to higher use of electronic devices and heating.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 05:22:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

17,513 MW divided by 0.016 mWh (10,656 kWh per household annually) and there are 3.8 millions households in Michigan.

In the US the summer is the peak period because of air conditioing. In the winter the principal heating fuel for the Midwest is natural gas. Deep lake cooling technology may have limited usefulness in the region reducing air conditioning.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 08:53:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

Is that summer peak period pattern true for the Great Lakes region too, or is it true for the whole of the USA?

17,513 MW divided by 0.016 mWh (10,656 kWh per household annually) and there are 3.8 millions households in Michigan.

I can't see how your calculation works out. 10,656 kWh of electricity consumed annually would be 0.0012 MWh consumed hourly (i.e. an average power need of 0.0012 MW), not 0.016 MWh. You also seem to have forgot the capacity factor. Here is one way how it could be calculated correctly:

Taking 25% for capacity factor, those 17,513 MW would produce 17,513 MW x 24 hours x 365 days x 0.25 = 38.35 TWh annually, while households would need 10,656 kWh x 3,600,000 = 38.36 TWh annually. By pure accident, that covers demand exactly!

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 09:39:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

I'd blame this on my utter lack of math skills, but I think that the ignorance that cause this is an error in thinking Megawatts are the same as mWh. And I seriously underestimated the potential as a result :)

Did I mention the report I cited excluded offshore potential, and was comissioned by the Michigan department of Commerce, curious the correllation between demand and supply here. It's almost as thought they are suggesting that wind can produce all of Michigan's power needs.......

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 08:31:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind (none / 0)

I think that the ignorance that cause this is an error in thinking Megawatts are the same as mWh

Yes, MW is a unit of the rate of energy production, MWh is the amount of energy produced (e.g. 1 MWh is the energy produced in one hour at a rate of 1 MW). Nevermind - but for future reference, I also note that mWh would not be Megawatt:

1 mWh = 1 milliwatt-hour = 0.000,001 kWh
1 Wh = 1 Watt-hour = 0.001 kWh
1 kWh = 1 kilowatt-hour
1 MWh = 1 Megawatt-hour = 1,000 kWh
1 GWh = 1 Gigawatt-hour = 1,000,000 kWh
1 TWh = 1 Terawatt-hour = 1,000,000,000 kWh

(Sorry for the pedantry, but I am both a chronical nitpicker and an ex-physicist.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Mar 10th, 2006 at 04:21:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Average speeds (none / 0)

is the normalised way production potential is expressed in the industry - it does reflect weighted averages.

It is a bit strange, but that's how it is.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 9th, 2006 at 10:52:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Average speeds (none / 0)

Average speeds is the normalised way production potential is expressed in the industry - it does reflect weighted averages.

What do you mean? Weighted with the characteristic curve of a "typical" (or test) turbine? Or <v³> averaging? Mean with Raleigh distribution of wind speeds? With Weibull distribution?

In ManfromMiddletown's link, they apparently use the mean with the Weibull distribution.

How different just the wind power densities for the same mean wind speed can be, can be seen on the example of three measuring sites in this NREL table (they used Raleigh distribution), and the first graph on page 18 of ManfromMiddletown's source is also indicative. The turbine power curve, and different turbine power curves are complications on this. Here is a graph from Answers.com, showing 2002 data from the Lee Ranch wind farm in Colorado (power is turbine power and thus includes the turbine power characteristics, the curves are the Raleigh models):

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Fri Mar 10th, 2006 at 04:08:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Kicking the CO2 habit:Wedding Great Lakes Wind to Water | 22 comments (22 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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