Sunday, March 21, 2010

How is Bonneville Power Administration wind doing?

Balancing Authority Load and Total Wind Generation Chart, Last 7 days

11 comments:

Fordi said...

Wind is Log Technology - better than bad, therefore "good".

Charles Barton said...

Fordi, On what basis do you judge wind to be better than bad. The BPA wind performance over thew last week has been miserable, not anywhere close to good.

Anonymous said...

Charles, you'd have to be a "Ren and Stimpy" fan to get Fordi's joke.

But this might help:

http://www.snotr.com/video/228

Soylent said...

Picture doesn't show.

Nabbed this from the page source: http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.png

www.transmission.bpa.gov/ is not responding.

Charles Barton said...

It shows on my browser (Safari.

Lynne said...

Maybe the wind performance looks better if you meditate for an hour and then sing Kumbaya a few times. Seriously, I'm really getting tired of this insanity.

donb said...

I have been keeping the tabular version of the data that makes up the plots, going back to August of last year (with a few minor gaps). I would be glad to share the data with anyone interested.

LarryD said...

H/T Next Big Future:

A new spin-out company from The University of Nottingham aims to lower wind energy costs by four times and reduce the cost of storing excess wind energy by five times. NIMROD Energy Ltd is being launched this week by Professor Seamus Garvey. The system is also four times more efficient in terms of the amount of steel and concrete is needed to generate a megawatt.

IF they can live up to their claims it might make wind energy practical. IF. In certain locations, it's an off-shore system and he wants 600m depth for the compressed air energy storage.

I'm not sure that there are even any suitable locations off of the coast of the continental US. Hawaii probably, Alaska maybe.

Charles Barton said...

4 times less steel and concrete, now that is quite a trick. I wonder what they do to keep those towers up in a stiff breeze.

LarryD said...

Trestle design. These things don't work unless they're large. Gravity driven pistons in the blades compress air which eventualy drives turbine(s). The blades have to be very large to insure that they turn slow enough that gravity is stronger than centripital force on the pistons.

I'm guessing that the material efficiency comes from a scaling advantage.

Duncan said...

I love that your BPA chart continues updating after you posted.

Seems like those couple days last week without wind were no aberration - Tuesday and Wednesday this week the contribution from wind was nearly 0 for about 36 hours, by eyeball.

Followers

Blog Archive

Some neat videos

Nuclear Advocacy Webring
Ring Owner: Nuclear is Our Future Site: Nuclear is Our Future
Free Site Ring from Bravenet Free Site Ring from Bravenet Free Site Ring from Bravenet Free Site Ring from Bravenet Free Site Ring from Bravenet
Get Your Free Web Ring
by Bravenet.com
Dr. Joe Bonometti speaking on thorium/LFTR technology at Georgia Tech David LeBlanc on LFTR/MSR technology Robert Hargraves on AIM High