[lbo-talk] Could wind provide 95% of U.S. electricity?

Gar Lipow the.typo.boy at gmail.com
Tue Dec 19 14:01:31 PST 2006



>A while back I claimed that an all-dispatchable grid would require 75
hours of storage. I have been definitively proven wrong. Nothing like that is required.


>In fact, tiny amounts of storage may do the trick if the grid is
large enough -- and making the grid large enough is not that expensive. We may already have in place what we need for a completely renewable grid.


>The 75-hour figure came from studies of single, isolated wind farms.
But as you add wind farms, the odds of two wind farms being down -- or low producers at the same time -- drops.


>I came across confirmation by accident: a Vehicle to Grid study (PDF)
that evaluated data from eight sites showed that storing just 36 minutes of nameplate capacity would allow the widely dispersed farms to meet a firm power commitment ~90% of the time.

Read the rest on Grist:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/212637/60

-- Please note: Personal messages should be sent to [garlpublic] followed by the [at] sign with isp of [comcast], then [dot] and then an extension of net



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