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Unreliability of wind power generate can be largely mitigated by interconnecting disparate wind farms spread over a large area.
by millettjon 10y ago
Unreliability of wind power generate can be largely mitigated by interconnecting disparate wind farms spread over a large area.
- ThomPete 10y agoWhich requires large areas which isn't always possible. I don't think this will be properly solved until we have proper fuel-cells
- antr 10y agoEnergy investor here with a pretty large wind portfolio (1GW) under management. This geographically dispersed portfolio idea doesn't really work. Due to different wind patterns, and wind types, a wind portfolio cannot be relied on for stable power generation... this is ignoring power curves, availability, transmission losses, network balancing, node bottlenecks, etc. Take as an example the entire wind capacity in Ireland, and the curtailment issues this generates.
- beat 10y agoAre you looking into storage as well? The engineer in me says caching is the way to convert an intermittent source to a steady load. I'm really curious what a wind investor is thinking about this!
- antr 10y agoHave we looked at it, yes. Are we investing in battery storage, no. It's too early for us to invest in this technology. This should be interesting for energy investors with a slightly higher risk appetite.
- beat 10y agoAh, that makes sense. It's a very early market. I'm excited for the possibilities, though. If storage can solve the intermittency issue, solar/wind can become baseline load sources more easily, and we'll need far less actual generation in place to maintain the grid. I firmly believe the way out of our power dilemma is just make wind/solar cheaper per kwh than fossil fuels.