So much of the clean-tech sector’s energies—and worries–are dedicated to divining which way the political winds will blow. But the key to doubling America’s renewable energy might lie in learning how the real winds are blowing.
Better forecasting of wind could be just as crucial to the future development of U.S. wind resources as government support, clean-energy mandates, a new power grid, and the like.
That’s why Xcel Energy is teaming up with government weathermen at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado—to get a better handle on which way the winds are blowing, and how hard. Better forecasting techniques could save the utility millions of dollars, and make it easier to integrate notoriously fickle wind power into the nation’s energy mix.
Wind-power developers and power companies obviously know roughly when and how hard wind will blow; that’s the first step in building a new wind farm. But figuring out exactly when and how hard the wind will blow is the key to getting those wind farms to work well with the rest of the electricity system.
When power grid operators find a sudden dearth of wind when they are counting on a steady supply—as they did last year in Texas—the results can be ugly. That usually forces grid operators to turn to backup power like gas-fired plants to pick up the slack. That in turn undermines a lot of the environmental promise of wind farms, and can lead to a spike in electricity costs. If there’s more wind than expected, already-scheduled power supplies have to be shut down, adding more expense.
The tricky problem for wind power’s development: The more wind power you have, the more expensive it is to manage that intermittency. California’s been trying to solve that problem for years, since that represents a roadblock to the state’s goal of generating 33% of power from renewable sources.
The Electricial Power Research Institute found in 2006 that costs for managing those unexpected hour-to-hour variations ranged between 0.18 cents per kilowatt hour when there’s not much wind on the system to 0.55 cents per kilowatt hour when there’s a lot of wind installed.
That might not sound like a lot, but when the industry’s lifeline for years has been a 2-cent-per-kilowatt hour subsidy, solving the forecasting problem could tackle both economic and physical disadvantages of wind power.
Which is just what companies like Seattle-based 3TIER have been doing for years. Last week, the company released its newest product—a detailed map of global wind resources. It also offers an interactive wind map covering all of North America. The company offers wind-farm operators detailed, hourly data on wind meant to help identify new sites for wind farms and make existing ones run better.
The company’s biggest fear now? That the sudden government enthusiasm for throwing big money at clean energy could actually crowd out private companies. Xcel’s forecasting deal in Colorado, for example, is with government meteorologists–and will take 30 months to fully develop. That puts 3TIER’s chief executive, Ken Westrick, in the odd position of lobbying Washington to scale back some clean-energy largess.
“I’m telling everybody I can get in front of that these kinds of companies already exist in the private sector,” he told us. “Don’t spend $30 million to draw up a wind map we just finished doing.”
