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Re-thinking Renewable Energy Predictions
http://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2016/3/3/re-thinking-renewable-energy-predictions[font face=Serif]3 Mar 2016
[font size=5]Re-thinking Renewable Energy Predictions[/font]
[font size=3]Unlike conventional energy sources, like coal or oil, the supply and demand of renewable energy are, to a large extent, unpredictable because they are affected by the natural fluctuations in the power source itself. This poses a number of difficulties in calculating how much renewable energy will be available for consumer needs at any given time.
...
“It’s generally assumed that geographically distributed wind farms are independent. In other words, the fluctuations in power output from one wind farm are different from that of another wind farm, say 50 km away,” Bandi said.
Instead, the data that Bandi and his team analysed showed that the wind farms on a grid no longer function independently of one another in response to local wind speed conditions, but instead become part of a larger geographic weather system that forces all the wind farms to have similar or correlated outputs for a time span of up to one day.
“If there is a medium that connects them, then one will observe that the two wind farms will fluctuate in a similar fashion. This does not mean their outputs are exactly synchronized at every instant, but on average their outputs fluctuate very similar to each other. The average is important. That is what we mean by correlated,” said Bandi.
...[/font][/font]
[font size=5]Re-thinking Renewable Energy Predictions[/font]
[font size=3]Unlike conventional energy sources, like coal or oil, the supply and demand of renewable energy are, to a large extent, unpredictable because they are affected by the natural fluctuations in the power source itself. This poses a number of difficulties in calculating how much renewable energy will be available for consumer needs at any given time.
...
“It’s generally assumed that geographically distributed wind farms are independent. In other words, the fluctuations in power output from one wind farm are different from that of another wind farm, say 50 km away,” Bandi said.
Instead, the data that Bandi and his team analysed showed that the wind farms on a grid no longer function independently of one another in response to local wind speed conditions, but instead become part of a larger geographic weather system that forces all the wind farms to have similar or correlated outputs for a time span of up to one day.
“If there is a medium that connects them, then one will observe that the two wind farms will fluctuate in a similar fashion. This does not mean their outputs are exactly synchronized at every instant, but on average their outputs fluctuate very similar to each other. The average is important. That is what we mean by correlated,” said Bandi.
...[/font][/font]
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