5 ms·

It's like the writer doesn't know that windmills can be stopped. In fact, they have builtin brakes which autoengage and stops the mill when the wind becomes to

It's like the writer doesn't know that windmills can be stopped. In fact, they have builtin brakes which autoengage and stops the mill when the wind becomes too powerful.

Gring 14y ago
Exactly. So the question is, when facing the risk of a black-out, why don't they just stop the windmills? And in the long term, why is Europe not building more Pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants, which would solve the issue? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...)
- anonymouz 14y ago
  Reading on, the problem seems to be not really specific to the windmills themselves, but to the fact that Germany is transmitting a lot of power from the North (where the windmills are) to the South (where the industry is). There is also a lot of transfer between Austria and Germany going on (with Austria's hydroelectric pumped-storage power stations essentially serving as batteries), and the Czech's are unhappy that their grid is used for this transmission for free.
- DasIch 14y ago
  You cannot just build more pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants, you need mountains or at least hills, that fit certain parameters and in the places you can build them you will already find them. Northern Germany probably doesn't have a single such plant but Northern Germany also doesn't have a single mountain, hill or anything higher than a tree as far as the eye can see. You will find those plants in Southern Germany and Austria but then again they do actually have places to put them. Besides stopping the windmills or installing plants is not the problem. The problem is that the German grid can't deal with the energy produced in Germany and uses neighboring grids that are not designed to handle that much load.
raverbashing 14y ago
No, this sounds like the "oil fans" "analysis" Most of them will come with bs excuses for why only oil is the solution and everything else doesn't work. There is no such thing as "too much energy produced" for a start. As you said, they can brake the blades, or just disconnect the generators, easy. Storage and variation of power are real problems, but they can be dealt with.
tvladeck 14y ago
You are correct, but the problem is tuning the production from wind farms to match demand exactly, in real time, which is what is required to operate the grid. When it comes to renewable energy wind is the hardest in this regard, because production can fluctuate rapidly in very short time scales, especially when there's gusting.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  all modern wind turbines have variable incidence blades meaning power regulation can happen on a second timescale. I'm not exactly sure about the electrical machinery, but if that is sophisticated enough, it can be used in high accuracy fashion to control the generation so that the electeicity is produced in high quality. You can think of the wind plant working as a giant flywheel. If there is a sudden gust, the spin speed increases and the extra speed is gradually harvested as energy. No sudden spikes. In theory the plants could be used to improve the frequency quality even more by also acting as motors. If there is a real wind powef power electrical engineer around, feel free to chime in.
  - tvladeck 14y ago
    i'm sure you're correct. i actually don't know the nitty-gritty technical details. i only know wind from a policy perspective. any power source imposes costs on the grid (transmission congestion, ramp rates, supply/demand mismatches, active/reactive power, etc.) and wind is considered almost pathological in every dimension - but i'm sure it's all solvable.
sxp 14y ago
If the power companies stop running the windmills, they don't get any money. >Wind farms in West Texas earlier this year were paying utilities to use their electricity on particularly gusty days because they can still earn $22 a megawatt-hour in federal tax credits
rainysunday 14y ago
Starting next year there will be an extra management bonus in Germany if the wind park is remote controllable. (There are two ways to sell wind energy in Germany, just sell it as it is produced (fixed feed-in-tariffs, EEG) or trade it. In the latter case it makes sense to stop your wind park as prices become negative.)
yxhuvud 14y ago
Did you even read the article? It is about failures in grid construction and of failures to construct proper trading areas (resulting in chokepoints in the grid).
vidarh 14y ago
The issue is not that they can't be stopped, but that it is not in Germanys interest to stop them. They need the energy, just not in the North where it is produced. They just don't have the North-South transmission capacity, and so the energy flows through neighbouring countries and put their neighbours networks at risk. As long as their neighbours let them, it's vastly cheaper for Germany to keep this going than to speed up the upgrades of their own transmission capacity.

It's like the writer doesn't know that windmills can be stopped. In fact, they have builtin brakes which autoengage and stops the mill when the wind becomes too powerful.

Gring 14y ago

Exactly. So the question is, when facing the risk of a black-out, why don't they just stop the windmills? And in the long term, why is Europe not building more Pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants, which would solve the issue? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...)

anonymouz 14y ago
Reading on, the problem seems to be not really specific to the windmills themselves, but to the fact that Germany is transmitting a lot of power from the North (where the windmills are) to the South (where the industry is). There is also a lot of transfer between Austria and Germany going on (with Austria's hydroelectric pumped-storage power stations essentially serving as batteries), and the Czech's are unhappy that their grid is used for this transmission for free.
DasIch 14y ago
You cannot just build more pumped-storage hydroelectric power plants, you need mountains or at least hills, that fit certain parameters and in the places you can build them you will already find them. Northern Germany probably doesn't have a single such plant but Northern Germany also doesn't have a single mountain, hill or anything higher than a tree as far as the eye can see. You will find those plants in Southern Germany and Austria but then again they do actually have places to put them. Besides stopping the windmills or installing plants is not the problem. The problem is that the German grid can't deal with the energy produced in Germany and uses neighboring grids that are not designed to handle that much load.

raverbashing 14y ago

No, this sounds like the "oil fans" "analysis" Most of them will come with bs excuses for why only oil is the solution and everything else doesn't work. There is no such thing as "too much energy produced" for a start. As you said, they can brake the blades, or just disconnect the generators, easy. Storage and variation of power are real problems, but they can be dealt with.

tvladeck 14y ago

You are correct, but the problem is tuning the production from wind farms to match demand exactly, in real time, which is what is required to operate the grid. When it comes to renewable energy wind is the hardest in this regard, because production can fluctuate rapidly in very short time scales, especially when there's gusting.

Gravityloss 14y ago
all modern wind turbines have variable incidence blades meaning power regulation can happen on a second timescale. I'm not exactly sure about the electrical machinery, but if that is sophisticated enough, it can be used in high accuracy fashion to control the generation so that the electeicity is produced in high quality. You can think of the wind plant working as a giant flywheel. If there is a sudden gust, the spin speed increases and the extra speed is gradually harvested as energy. No sudden spikes. In theory the plants could be used to improve the frequency quality even more by also acting as motors. If there is a real wind powef power electrical engineer around, feel free to chime in.
- tvladeck 14y ago
  i'm sure you're correct. i actually don't know the nitty-gritty technical details. i only know wind from a policy perspective. any power source imposes costs on the grid (transmission congestion, ramp rates, supply/demand mismatches, active/reactive power, etc.) and wind is considered almost pathological in every dimension - but i'm sure it's all solvable.

sxp 14y ago

If the power companies stop running the windmills, they don't get any money. >Wind farms in West Texas earlier this year were paying utilities to use their electricity on particularly gusty days because they can still earn $22 a megawatt-hour in federal tax credits

rainysunday 14y ago

Starting next year there will be an extra management bonus in Germany if the wind park is remote controllable. (There are two ways to sell wind energy in Germany, just sell it as it is produced (fixed feed-in-tariffs, EEG) or trade it. In the latter case it makes sense to stop your wind park as prices become negative.)

yxhuvud 14y ago

Did you even read the article? It is about failures in grid construction and of failures to construct proper trading areas (resulting in chokepoints in the grid).

vidarh 14y ago

The issue is not that they can't be stopped, but that it is not in Germanys interest to stop them. They need the energy, just not in the North where it is produced. They just don't have the North-South transmission capacity, and so the energy flows through neighbouring countries and put their neighbours networks at risk. As long as their neighbours let them, it's vastly cheaper for Germany to keep this going than to speed up the upgrades of their own transmission capacity.