Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
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 ]

Display:

Occasional Series