so when CO ditches coal fired plants.....

[DenverGP]

Didn't that chart hollohaus posted show that wind was already on par with traditional fossil fuel usage? I was either surprised to see that, or read the graph wrong.

You talking about this one:




I suspect you were reading it incorrectly, thinking that green being at the top meant it was more... the total peak for a day is the total of all power sources shown. You can get a better idea of how it's working by looking at solar.... it's the barely visible yellow spots thrown in there... the fact that they are on top of the gas definitely doesn't indicate it was doing more....

Basically for any given day/time, the amount of green vs tan vs brown shows you their relative production.

On the best spots on that graph for wind, it looks like it was doing about 20k megawatt hours. But for most of the graph, it's way under that.

Natural gas has spots during the peak demand period where it was making 35k megawatt hours... Add in coal doing a very consistent 10-12k megawatt hours, gives you fossil fuels producing 45k at times.

Nuclear looks like a very steady 5k megawatt hours.

[Irving]

That's the graph. Guess I'm confused because the key says wind is green, and I see the green at a consistent 35k -50k throughout. Am I reading something wrong?

[DenverGP]

Don't picture it as a 3d chart... it isn't the green behind the others, it's all sources stacked on top of each other.

Wind production is the amount from the bottom of the green to the top of the green on any given X axis point....

look at Feb 1 for example.
Green goes from 35K up to around 40k.... so green (wind) produced 5k..
Tan goes from around 18k up to 35k, so tan (gas) produced about 17k.
The total on feb 1 was 40k, which is the total produced by all sources shown.

There are plenty of spots where wind isn't doing any more than the 5k of nuclear.

[Irving]

Oh I see, that's the cumulative amount. Thanks for the explanation. Wind is still producing much more than I would have expected.

[DenverGP]

Just hope the wind happens to be blowing good when you need more power...

But not blowing too hard, they have to take the turbines offline if winds exceed around 55mph.

And if the wind just doesn't blow hard enough, and we've removed the on-demand production of natural gas, we're just SOL.

Wind is still producing much more than I would have expected.

At times... other times it's barely producing anything.

[Singlestack]

Climate change = $$$

Not sure how these douche Hipster Libs can ignore history. 1000 yrs ago Europe had 300 yrs of “Climate Change”. Gee, no snow, warm winters, and 2 harvests a year. Can’t blame that on carbon footprint. Population doubled...and was quickly wiped out by The Black Plague. Plague came back every 20-30 yrs or so til 1666. Still can’t find a legit logical reason for this 300 yrs of warm weather. Lotta theories but these fanatical climate chuckleheads can’t get the jelly out of donut let alone explain the weather.

Shut up, racist!

[Aloha_Shooter]

Oh I see, that's the cumulative amount. Thanks for the explanation. Wind is still producing much more than I would have expected.

Yes, it's a sand chart. Pretty common when you're looking at budget or costs with multiple sources or destinations.

The utility should be monitoring the demand for power in real time and adjusting power generation to meet the total demand. Basically, look at the current demand, subtract what you're getting from unadjustable sources (solar, wind) and then figure out how to meet the additional demand. It looks like they treat nuclear as unadjustable and the coal can be adjusted but the change in power generation is slow; natural gas is the quickest reaction so that's where you see the greatest variability.

[BladesNBarrels]

One Word

Batteries!

[hollohas]

One Word

Batteries!

That what we're told is next, but we're no where close to being able to use batteries.

Look at our local Platte River Power Authority as the example I posted above. They tout about 52MW of solar generation capacity, which is significant for a small regional utility. But they are just now getting around to installing 2MW of battery storage (the discharge is 1MW for just 2-hours when there isn't any sun). So they'll only be able to store/use about 2% of the max generation capacity. Those lithium-ion batteries will be 33ft long, 6ft wide, 10ft tall.

[fj605]

It wasn't just windmills freezing up that caused the power outages. It's a nice talking point but not reality. The natural gas pipelines also froze. Maintenance procedures to drain the lines of any water weren't performed and exposed portions of the lines weren't insulated.