Climate and energy

Reminder – today is the wind summit out in Kingman, run by the Kansas Rural Center and co-sponsored by several entities, including the Sumner County Economic Development Commission (I’d be there meeting wind folks, but – well, I’m not. I’m here in Topeka at the Capitol. There is a very outside chance that House Substitute for SB 148, or the bill informally known as Holcomb II, will be run on the House floor today).

Highlight of my morning. The quote from Donn Teske of Kansas Farmers’ Union, when a reporter asked him his opinion of the new Holcomb bill, which has a very interesting provision that would offer utilities the ability to penalize users of wind energy as automatically having interruptible status (Hutchison News).

“Sounds like bull crap,” said Donn Teske, president of the Kansas Farmers Union, whose group supports community wind energy projects. “Wind has gone way beyond being a token fad. And it’s time they start looking at ways to address global warming.”

Lowlight of my morning. A 160 square mile chunk of the Wilkins ice shelf in western Antarctica suddenly collapsed yesterday. It was seven time the size of Manhattan (the one in NY, not the home of K-State – I don’t see why the NY location should always be assumed) and had been there for as much as 1500 years. Researchers confirm that the collapse was the result of global warming and is indicative of triggers, or a tipping point, in the earth’s climate system (LJWorld).

Birds and towers. The issue of bird deaths and cell phone towers is related to the issue of bird deaths and wind towers, so this article from CS Monitor on new bird and tower lighting research is well worth a read. Evidently, how towers are lighted can drastically impact bird deaths.

Our technologies – all of them – have environmental impact. If we want the benefits of technology, then we should also accept the burden (I actually first typed “birden”) of our responsibility to lessen those impacts on the voiceless ones, like birds.

Wind and Intermittency. The American Wind Energy Association allowed Renewable Energy Access to reprint an interesting portion of their newsletter regarding wind power’s reliability. This issue has popped up yet again because of the recent incident in Texas where wind power went offline for a while. This dip was predicted in several forecasts, but grid procedures apparently did not yet fully allocate for this occurrence. Then when baseload power was called upon for back-up, a baseload provider was apparently not able to respond in time.

There were clearly a few slips in the chain, and the incident provides a great teaching and learning moment for how all parties can work together toward better practices of wind integration. However, many folks not favorable to wind have seized upon this as a blame moment. Thus wind is getting dissed. Thus AWEA must say things like:

Is Wind Less “Reliable” than Conventional Generation?

No. Conventional resources occasionally shut down with no notice, and these “forced outages” require operating reserves. For example, a power system that has 1,000-megawatt nuclear or coal plants will typically keep 1,000 megawatts of other generation available, to be ready to quickly supply electricity if a plant unexpectedly shuts down. The power system can still be operated perfectly reliably in this fashion. Thus, “reliability” is not specific to any single generation facility, rather it is measured on a system-wide basis.

As noted by Jon Brekke, Vice President of Member Services for Great River Energy, a utility that operates in Minnesota and Wisconsin: “Wind energy is a valuable part of our diverse and growing energy portfolio. When partnered with other traditional generation resources, wind energy is an effective way to provide reliable, clean and affordable power to our member cooperatives.

Geographic diversity of wind energy helps even out the variability of wind energy in the regional market. In addition, wind farms are typically made up of many individual turbines, which reduce the impact of outages. For instance, there are 67 1.5-MW turbines at our Trimont Wind Farm, so if one is down for maintenance only 1.5% of the total wind farm’s generating capacity is lost.”

Changes in wind energy output are not instantaneous, as are conventional generator failures. Because of the geographic diversity inherent with large numbers of wind turbine installations, it typically takes over an hour for even a rapid change in wind speeds to shut down a large amount of wind generation. This is a significant benefit when compared with the instantaneous tripping of conventional units. In addition, wind forecasting tools that warn system operators of pending major wind output variations are becoming widely used and better integrated into system operations.

Facts are always welcome, but sometimes you have to overcome folks’ biases before the facts can penetrate. A popular bias against wind seems to stem from an all or nothing mindset – that wind has to somehow justify itself as a stand alone source of power, perfect and dependable in every way.

However, wind advocates are not in fact promoting wind as Prince Charming (a smarmy, smooth-talking storybook character that no one really trusts). Wind is simply a renewable resource that helps balance the traditional fossil fuel and nuclear power generation portfolio.

Let’s try another metaphor – would you cook chili with only meat, and no beans or spices or onions or chiles? I hope not. (That would be “ground beef.” Tasty but definitely not chili.) Would you base the security and reliability of any power grid around one generation source only? Again, I hope not. That would be less than smart.

Innovest update. CEP covered the Innovest report on Sunflower Electric yesterday, as part of the wave of coverage now saturating the blogosphere. I imagine it will receive a great deal of attention today as well.

Obviously the report says some important things about Kansas and risks to ratepayers. I get that. On the other hand, as a Kansan I’m also not really crazy about seeing any Kansas corporation or cooperative called out like this, on a national (even international) level. This coal discussion has gone to whole new levels. Since our state has such a high profile on the issue, I understand we make a good case study to illustrate the pressures around new coal generation. Still.

For some reason, throughout history Kansas has often played the role of a controversial case study. It’s a little ironic, considering we are generally pretty mild-mannered people. I hope we continue to remember that, as the debate marches on.

Dog poop icicles? I’m always in need of a lighter note upon which to end these news updates… and Christina, the CEP staff member who organizes the rest of us, found one for me! Here is a consumer product that no one – no one! – really needs to purchase.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org