Civil Engineering: "Why Wind Power 'Works' For Denmark."

[NNadir]

http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/sharman-winddenmark.pdf">Talk About Damning with Faint Praise.

Denmark generates more wind power per head of population than any other country in the world. Its 5500 wind turbines, including the world’s two largest offshore wind farms, generate 16% of national demand.With increasing concerns over fossil fuels, the country is now being closely monitored by energy planners and funders worldwide. However, as this paper reveals, Denmark is exporting most of its wildly fluctuating wind power to larger neighbors while finding other solutions for supply and demand at home.

Um...um...other solutions? What may those be? It does seem that Denmark is "upgrading" it's coal plants, suggesting that Denmark, with it's "drill baby drill" dangerous fossil fuel off shore program (that produces far more energy than wind power could dream of producing) has no interest whatsoever in phasing out dangerous fossil fuels.

For a literally graphic description of Danish energy flows, one can refer to the energy flow diagram provided by the, um, Danish Energy Agency: http://www.ens.dk/graphics/UK_Facts_Figures/Statistics/yearly_statistics/2007/Flow2007.pdf">Danish Energy Flows. We can see easily from this graphic by reference to the numbers on the right side of the chart, assuming that one hasn't learned third grade arithmetic at Greenpeace that 139 is not greater than 200, nor is it greater than 652, nor is um, greater than 346. If one did learn math at Greenpeace, one can't be helped.

Denmark's energy system would collapse tomorrow were it not for it's practice of burning dangerous fossil fuels and dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste in its favorite dump, the planet's only atmosphere in such a way, given the laws of statistical mechanics as developed by Maxwell and Boltzman, that it is quickly distributed every place on earth, including human flesh.

But, um, Denmark has a "workable" Wind program that is the, um, "envy" of everyone on earth, except possibly people who are intimately connected with science. It 'works.'

This paper reports on performance data of the west Denmark power grid, to which 80% of the country’s wind power is connected. The east Denmark power grid is entirely separate but both grids are heavily interconnected to the national grids of neighboring countries to the north and south.

In 1990 Denmark had six large power stations, all of them designed as combined heat and power plants providing district heating to west Denmark’s largest towns (Fig. 2). Five are coal-fired power stations and the sixth is designed for ultra-supercritical steam operation on gas. The coal fired station near Aalborg has since been extended and this and the gas-fired station are now the most efficient Rankine cycle plants in the world. The installed capacity of the main thermal power stations at the end of 2003 was 3.5 GW. During the past 15 years there was also an intensive construction programme to upgrade the district heating plants in most Danish towns and villages to combined heat and power. The total capacity of these ‘de-centralised’ power units in 2004 was 1450 MW. They are mostly based on natural gas engines, though a significant number are bio-fueled.

Of course, we should only consider the biofueled distributed energy nightmares. Why? Because we don't want to notice what we don't want to hear.

(I am, however, a fan of combined cycles and district heating, as long as no dangerous fossil fuel waste is dumped in the process, a situation that is only obtained in countries like Romania.)

Still, to chant the chant, wind power is wonderful. Let us pray.

Although more wind power overall has been installed in the US and Germany, the ‘wind intensity’ of western Denmark is still unmatched. It is equivalent to 0.88 kW of installed capacity per person in western Denmark compared with 0.18 kW per person in Germany and 0.01 kW per person in the UK (at the end of 2003).

But um, um, um, um...

Load factor is just 20%.

Load factor (or capacity factor) has been averaging about 20% in west Denmark (Fig. 6). For those not familiar with the term ‘load factor’, if a 1 MW wind generator is working at 100% load factor, it would produce 1 MW per h, 24 h per day, 365 days per year, giving a total of 8760 MWh per year. If it produces half this annual amount—4380 MWh—its load factor would be 50%, and so on.

In the UK the onshore load factor has dropped to around 25%. As time goes by and the development of wind power at the best wind sites gives way to less favourable ones, the specific output at each new site in the UK is likely to decline further.

I've done this calculation lots of times here at DU, usually to be met with huge bursts of denial.

Of interest is figure 7 in the paper that shows the inverse relationship between the number of wind installations and the capacity factor. Treadmill anyone?

In every power grid, load and demand are balanced dynamically as there is effectively no storage in the transmission and distribution system. This is not to be confused with energy storage systems (e.g. pumped or compressed air storage), which buy low-cost power in times of excess generation and deliver it very much as any other generator in times of higher demand. As mentioned above, the west and east Danish grids have strong interconnections with neighbouring countries but are not linked to each other. West Denmark is tied into the much bigger grids of its neighbours Sweden, Norway and Germany with a total interconnector capacity of 2400 MW (Fig. 12). This is equivalent to two-thirds of the region’s peak winter demand and, interestingly, about the same as its current wind capacity. As shown in Fig. 13, west Denmark makes full use of its interconnections for balancing wind power as there is a strong correlation between wind output and net power outflows. However, the interconnectors were built primarily to link Norway and Sweden to Germany and, without their prior existence, it may not have been viable for west Denmark to build wind capacity on the scale it has. Furthermore, the success of the interconnections has much to do with the extent to which both Sweden and Norway generate hydropower—which can supply 50% and nearly 100% of their respective needs from water turbines. Hydropower output can be adjusted very rapidly as the highly variable wind power flows through the interconnectors. It is also relevant that all three neighbouring systems, including Germany’s, are many times bigger than west Denmark’s and can act as a power sink to stabilize west Denmark’s much smaller grid.

What is interesting about the Danish-Swedish energy relationship to me, is that the Danes agitated for and pushed the cloture of the Barseback nuclear reactor in Sweden, which was shut in 1999. The vandalized and destroyed Swedish energy structure produced, in one small building, more energy than the entire nation of Denmark is currently able to produce in all of its whirling junk heaps of metal in all of its wind farms combined. Thus it can be said that Denmark did more damage to the fight against climate change than all of its wind plants have done to slow it, particularly because unlike the Danish crap, the Barseback reactor, which had 17 more years of life in it, was reliable and clean.

Barseback reactors produced about 8 TWh of energy each year. http://www.power-technology.com/projects/barseback/">Danish Inspired Vandalism and Destruction of Climate Change Gas Free Infrastructure.

Despite disingenuous or, more likely, totally delusional bullshit talk about how Sweden would replace the destroyed infrastructure the reality has been - like the willful destruction of nuclear power plants by appeals to ignorance everywhere, the replacement of the clean destroyed infrastructure by dangerous fossil fuel burning and dangerous fossil fuel waste burning, in this case, much of it supplied by dangerous fossil fuel burning Danes.

Fuckheads.

From the last link in this post we learn:

"Sweden is replacing the lost 8.5TWh/yr of nuclear output by importing largely coal-fired energy from Denmark and Germany, and nuclear from Finland and Russia. "

I repeat, as I've done many times before: Every single nuclear power plant destroyed by ignorance and delusion has been replaced by dangerous fossil fuels. Every. Damn. One.

Where the money went tells a lot about what Denmark's real interest in destroying this precious infrastructure really was.

Oh...and about Norway, like Denmark a dangerous fossil fuel exporting nation. It no longer produces all of its electricity from hydropower. It has built a dangerous fossil fuel powered plant at Karsto - about which it lied, saying it was going to sequester the dangerous fossil fuel waste, something that was repeated until the dangerous fossil fuel waste dumps in the North Sea were canceled as soon as the plant came on line.

At last, the conclusions from the Civil Engineering paper linked above.

Conclusions

Denmark has the most intense wind carpet in the world, with a total of 3000 MW installed by the end of 2003— equivalent to 0.88 kW of wind energy per person in west Denmark. The average annual load factor for the wind turbine carpet in west Denmark is measured at approximately 20%. There are considerable and often rapid output variations throughout the day and throughout the year. Accurate forecasting of wind speeds is still difficult and output rarely matches demand, sometimes dropping below zero as stalled wind turbines still require power for their steering systems. The variations, which are inherent in any wind energy system, can be readily accommodated in west Denmark because there are very strong electrical connections to the much larger grid systems of Norway, Sweden and Germany that can absorb these variations, particularly due to their reliance on rapid-reacting hydropower.

I favor the immediate phase out of dangerous fossil fuels. Obviously I'm not Danish.

Have a nice day.

[Turbineguy]

1. Interesting points you make.

The article (and you quote that part) states that wind power compliments hydro-power well. Wind power is of course supply dependent and therefore highly variable. Thermal plants cannot run at full efficiency when running at low power. In addition, one can simply not shut down a thermal plant and restart at whim. But hydro can be throttled very nicely and so is responsive to low wind and peak demands at the extremes.

Given that the greatest single loss in steam thermal plants is condenser loss and therefore the only way to obtain significant thermal efficiency increases is to raise the high side (supercritical in some cases), this is an issue that nuclear as well as fossil fuel turbine plants share.

I am with you however that local combined cycle plants (in northern climates anyway) are a good thing as engine exhaust and cooling losses (presumably these are diesel and/or gas turbine plants) can be used for heating. I would guess this could push overall cycle efficiencies up into the 80% range during the winter. But here, nuclear would be impractical due to its size. Therefore we are stuck with fossil fuels.

But clearly, Denmark has not solved its electrical power problems simply by building windfarms. It requires a much larger grid to balance the load as it were.

And that's the lesson we can take away from this.

[XemaSab]

3. If you're just using hydro for peak demand

then I suppose it works to a point.

Hydro here is used for peak demand plus water storage, so it's not as easy as opening the gates on still days.

[kristopher]

2. Wind Power Myths Debunked by International Electronic and Electrical Engineers

Wind Power Myths Debunked
By Michael Milligan, Kevin Porter, Edgar DeMeo, Paul Denholm, Hannele Holttinen, Brendan Kirby, Nicholas Miller, Andrew Mills, Mark O’Malley, Matthew Schuerger, and Lennart Soder

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2009.934268 november/december 2009 1540-7977/09/$26.00©2009 IEEE Power and Energy Magazine Master Series


Questions addressed:

Can Grid Operators Deal with the Continually Changing Output of Wind Generation?

Does Wind Have Capacity Credit?

How Often Does the Wind Stop Blowing Everywhere at the Same Time?

Isn’t It Very Difficult to Predict Wind Power?

Isn’t It Very Expensive to Integrate Wind?

Doesn’t Wind Power Need New Transmission, and Won’t That Make Wind Expensive?

Doesn’t Wind Power Need Backup Generation? Isn’t More Fossil Fuel Burned with Wind Than Without, Due to Backup Requirements?

Does Wind Need Storage?

Isn’t All the Existing Flexibility Already Used Up?

Is Wind Power as Good as Coal or Nuclear Even Though the Capacity Factor of Wind Power Is So Much Less?

Isn’t There a Limit to How Much Wind Can Be Accommodated by the Grid?

Wind Power Myths Debunked
Common Questions and Misconceptions
Introduction:
THE RAPID GROWTH OF WIND POWER IN THE UNITED STATES AND worldwide has resulted in increasing media attention to — and public awareness of — wind generation technology. Several misunderstandings and myths have arisen due to the characteristics of wind generation, particularly because wind-energy generation only occurs when the wind is blowing. Wind power is therefore not dispatchable like conventional energy sources and delivers a variable level of power depending on the wind speed. Wind is primarily an energy resource and not a capacity resource. Its primary value is to offset fuel consumption and the resulting emissions, including carbon. Only a relatively small fraction of wind energy is typically delivered during peak and high-risk time periods; therefore, wind generators have limited capacity value. This leads to concerns about the impacts of wind power on maintaining reliability and the balance between load and generation.

This article presents answers to commonly asked questions concerning wind power.

It begins by addressing the variability of wind and then discusses whether wind has capacity credit. The article addresses whether wind can stop blowing everywhere at once, the uncertainty of predicting wind generation, whether it is expensive to integrate wind power, the need for new transmission, and whether wind generation requires backup generation or dedicated energy storage. Finally, we discuss whether there is sufficient system flexibility to incorporate wind generation, whether coal is better than wind because coal has greater capacity factors, and whether there is a limit to how much wind power can be incorporated into the grid...

Summary
The natural variability of wind power makes it different from other generating technologies, which can give rise to questions about how wind power can be integrated into the grid successfully. This article aims to answer several important questions that can be raised with regard to wind power. Although wind is a variable resource, grid operators have experience with managing variability that comes from handling the variability of load. As a result, in many instances the power system is equipped to handle variability. Wind power is not expensive to integrate, nor does it require dedicated backup generation or storage. Developments in tools such as wind forecasting also aid in integrating wind power. Integrating wind can be aided by enlarging balancing areas and moving to subhourly sched- uling, which enable grid operators to access a deeper stack of generating resources and take advantage of the smooth- ing of wind output due to geographic diversity. Continued improvements in new conventional-generation technolo- gies and the emergence of demand response, smart grids, and new technologies such as plug-in hybrids will also help with wind integration.

Download open access article: http://www.ieee-pes.org/images/pdf/open-access-milligan.pdf

[NNadir]

4. Really? Wind power doesn't require back up?

You mean that anti-nukes only post tripe here when the wind isn't blowing? I could have sworn it was otherwise. My impression is that they generate a lot of wind, but very little light.

That is news.

Although wind has been in use for centuries, it does not generate significant energy on the planet, despite strewing parts of the planet with intrusive, ugly, and unreliable junk.

The real problem is that "wind will save us" advocates attack real infrastructure, with a 60 year operating history - which I note they are intellectually incapable of comprehending - that has functioned without producing significant climate change gases, based on their fantasies and wishful thinking.

Since it does NOT produce significant energy, it has very little experimental operational proof that, for instance, wind turbines can really last more than two decades. The number of crashed and destroyed wind turbines around the world suggests otherwise.





The energy density is extremely low as is the capacity utilization which effects both economics and environmental impact. The fact that "wind will save us" advocates are all innumerate and can't understand what "20%" means only obviates this reality. The Danish Energy Agency's flow chart in the opening post is typical of all wind proponents in that Denmark doesn't give a rat's ass about dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into earth's atmosphere.

The fact that the existing tiny capacity can be integrated into a dangerous fossil fuel powered grid means nothing since it cannot exist without dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure, no matter how much denialist bull we hear from, well, denialists.

There is NOT ONE "wind and solar will save us" anti-nuke hand waver on THIS website who can demonstrate a palpable plan to phase out dangerous fuels in their life time or any other person's life time using wind, because no such program is possible. It is also because because wind will save us junk dealers don't care about dangerous fossil fuels, dangerous fossil fuel waste, and the blasting of every shred of continental rock to get the last shred of dangerous natural gas to back up their stupid grease sticks.

That is WHY Denmark is drilling, baby, drilling all over the North Sea, and their myopia and indifference is why they worked so hard to destroy clean infrastructure that produced more energy on a few acres of land than they could produce in their entire nation, that being the nuclear infrastructure of Sweden. And let's be clear: That destroyed infrastructure was replaced by DANISH GAS and DANISH COAL BURNING PLANTS. They're driven by greed. It's because THEY don't give a rat's ass about the environment in Denmark. As the flowchart in the OP shows this page, also from http://www.ens.dk/documents/netboghandel%20-%20publikationer/olie-%20og%20gasressourcer/2009/html/dogp08_uk/html/helepubl.htm">the Danish Energy Agency - and in my less than humble opinion, the agenda of EVERY anti-nuke - is to greenwash dangerous fossil fuels and to generate complacency and indifference to the vast destruction their energy policies cause and help perpetuate.

You scrape the green paint off the face of any "wind will save us" advocate here or elsewhere and you find a dangerous fossil fuel apologist.

The entire Danish Energy Agency proves this point graphically.

It's a shame really, because Denmark was once a nation that could produce Neils Bohr, but now is a nation that is famous for inspiring lightweight bloggers to produce insipid wishful thinking tripe that is blatantly pro-fossil fuel.

Wind power is a fraud, a fig leaf for the gas industry, and nothing significant.

[kristopher]

5. You are obviously delusional

Doesn’t Wind Power Need Backup Generation? Isn’t More Fossil Fuel Burned with Wind Than Without, Due to Backup Requirements?

In a power system, it is necessary to maintain a continuous balance between production and consumption. System operators deploy controllable generation to follow the change in total demand, not the variation from a single generator or customer load. When wind is added to the system, the variability in the net load becomes the operating target for the system operator. It is not necessary and, indeed, it would be quite costly for grid operators to follow the variation in generation from a single generating plant or customer load.

“Backup” generating plants dedicated to wind plants — or to any other generation plant or load for that matter — are not required, and would actually be a poor and unnecessarily costly use of power-generation resources.

Regarding whether the addition of wind generation results in more combustion of fossil fuels, a wind-generated kilowatthour displaces a kilowatthour that would have been generated by another source—usually one that burns a fossil fuel. The wind-generated kilowatthour therefore avoids the fuel consumption and emissions associated with that fossil-fuel kilowatthour. The incremental reserves (spinning or nonspinning) required by wind’s variability and uncertainty, however, themselves consume fuel and release emissions, so the net savings are somewhat reduced. But what quantity of reserves is required? Numerous studies conducted to date—many of which have been summarized in previous wind - specific special issues of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine — have found that the reserves required by wind are only a small fraction of the aggregate wind generation and vary with the level of wind output. Generally, some of these reserves are spinning and some are nonspinning. The regulating and load-following plants could be forced to operate at a reduced level of efficiency, resulting in increased fuel consumption and increased emissions per unit of output.

A conservative example serves to illustrate the fuel-consumption and emissions impacts stemming from wind’s regulation requirements. Compare three situations:
1) a block of energy is provided by fossil-fueled plants;
2) the same block of energy is provided by wind plants that require no incremental reserves; and
3) the same block of energy is provided by wind plants that do have incremental reserve requirements. It is assumed that the average fleet fossil-fuel efficiency is unchanged between situations one and two. This might not be precisely correct, but a sophisticated operational simulation is required to address this issue quantitatively. In fact, this has been done in several studies, which bear out the general conclusions reached in this simple example.

In situation one, an amount of fuel is burned to produce the block of energy. In situation two, all of that fuel is saved and all of the associated emissions are avoided. In situation three, it is assumed that 3% of the fossil generation is needed to provide reserves, all of these reserves are spinning, and that this generation incurs a 25% efficiency penalty. The corresponding fuel consumption necessary to provide the needed reserves is then 4% of the fuel required to generate the entire block of energy. Hence, the actual fuel and emissions savings percentage in situation three relative to situation one is 96% rather than 100%. The great majority of initially estimated fuel savings does in fact occur, however, and the notion that wind’s variations would actually increase system fuel consumption does not withstand scrutiny.

A study conducted by the United Kingdom Energy Research Center (UKERC) supports this example. UKERC reviewed four studies that directly addressed whether there are greater CO2 emissions from adding wind generation due to increasing operating reserves and operating fossil-fuel plants at a reduced effi ciency level. The UKERC determined that the “efficiency penalty” was negligible to 7% for wind penetrations of up to 20%.


Does Wind Need Storage?
The fact that “the wind doesn’t always blow” is often used to suggest the need for dedicated energy storage to handle fluctuations in the generation of wind power. Such viewpoints, however, ignore the realities of both grid operation and the ...
-Wind Power Myths Debunked


This is as credible a source of information as can be found on these frequently asked questions related to wind power. Download the entire open access report here: http://www.ieee-pes.org/images/pdf/open-access-milligan.pdf



For Further Reading
European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). (2005). Large scale integration of wind energy in the European power supply: Analysis, issues, and recommendations. European Wind Energy Association . Available: http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/grid/051215_Grid_report.pdf



Biographies
Michael Milligan is a principal analyst with NREL, in Golden, Colorado.

Kevin Porter is a senior analyst with Exeter Associates Inc., in Columbia, Maryland.

Edgar DeMeo is president of Renewable Energy Consulting Services, in Palo Alto, California.

Paul Denholm is a senior energy analyst with NREL, in Golden, Colorado.

Hannele Holttinen is a senior research scientist with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Brendan Kirby is a consultant for NREL, in Golden, Colorado.

Nicholas Miller is a director at General Electric, in Schenectady, New York.

Andrew Mills is a senior research associate with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Berkeley, California.

Mark O’Malley is a professor, School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering of University College Dublin, in Ireland.

Matthew Schuerger is a principal consultant with Energy Systems Consulting Services LLC, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lennart Soder is a professor of electric power systems at the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden.

[Fledermaus]

6. Meow!

From the same article In other words, two renewable energy sources complement each other very well. If a grid does not have hydro or pumped hydro storage, integrating large amounts of wind is problematic.

Conclusions

The variations, which are inherent in
any wind energy system, can be readily
accommodated in west Denmark because
there are very strong electrical connections
to the much larger grid systems of
Norway, Sweden and Germany that can
absorb these variations, particularly due
to their reliance on rapid-reacting
hydropower. Countries such as the UK,
which operate an ‘island’ grid, will find it
difficult to do this with slower-reacting
thermal power stations and may thus
have to limit their reliance on wind
power.

[hunter]

7. That's a very odd paper. The words say it works, the numbers say it doesn't.

:shrug:

The pharmaceutical industry often publishes or supports the publication of papers like this.

"Our new drug is wonderful!" :woohoo:

And then you look at the numbers and it's not as effective as the old generic, it costs 100 times as much, and the side effects are worse.

[kristopher]

8. The numbers say "it works" as much as the words do.

You could be more explicit and we could discuss the details. Or you could read the paper from the IEEE that I linked to, which would probably eliminate your confusion by explaining why the things you think are indicators of wind not "working" are actually nothing more than nuclear industry talking points.