Wind energy does not require construction of additional `balancing' power stations
The amount of control and reserve power to balance the increasing amount of wind power has been calculated. The amounts of control energy are strongly depending on the accuracy of the short term wind power forecast, and the deviation between forecast and actual feed in.
The quality of the forecasting tools keeps on improving. It is found that the additional required balancing power (positive and negative regulation power, from secondary and hourly reserves) can be provided by the remaining conventional plants. There is no need for new investments in additional power stations for this purpose to meet the balancing needs of the German system with 36 GW of wind power. An overview of the required balancing power capacities is given in table 2.  In 2015 on average 3.2 GW positive regulation power representing 9% of the installed wind energy capacity and 2.8 GW negative regulation power representing 8% of the installed wind energy capacity is required.