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282 comments on DrumBeat: March 20, 2008

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AlanfromBigEasy on March 21, 2008 - 6:24am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You are comparing one year's installations vs. the generation from the total installed base (1960 to date for FF, 1910 to date for hydro). Since we do not have to solve our problems in the next 12 months, this is a false choice.

35% capacity factor is closer for new installations. Bigger WTs go higher and get better winds (even 1 mph delta is significant). And newer seems to have fewer maintenance outages.

For the next 3 or 4 years (5 years to build a new coal plant today I think, XX years for a new nuke), conservation and negawatts are our biggest potential source of power. Wind #2.

Geothermal has great potential in the US West. I learned quite a bit about secondary cycle geothermal to exploit lower heat sources (use a working fluid other than water/steam) at WIREC. Unfortunately geothermal competes with oil & gas for drilling rigs.

And solar is coming along, with $1 billion solar PV manufacturing plants under construction.

It is *NOT* a given that much more coal is required.

Best Hopes for Conservation,

Alan

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jrwakefield on March 21, 2008 - 10:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Actual wind output per hour for a 2 year period for Ontario can be found here:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/genDisclosure.asp

When you consolidate the number of hours of percent of name plate you get this graph.

Thus wind in Ontario 50% of the time is below 14% of nameplate. It never achieves nameplate output and spends 5% of the time generating nothing.

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