[ExI] Efficiency of wind power

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 12:28:19PM -0700, spike wrote:
>
> > Thanks Max.  I was a big fan of wind power until ~2008.  Starting in that
>
> I never was. The potential is limited to locations, and as a secondary
> source to the solar primary it is limited in total volume.
>
>
> [...]
>


> Nevertheless it is possible to generate a fair fraction of total
> electricity with wind alone:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany
>
> Recent study says 65% of total electricity production in
> Germany could be done with wind power -- in theory.
>

And in practice, wind power in Spain is already generating 21% of the total
electricity - and that's an average over the whole month of March 2011:

link in English:
http://www.ree.es/ingles/sala_prensa/web/notas_detalle.aspx?id_nota=180

On a particularly good day, Spanish wind power generation surpassed 50% of
the total generation:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/4100600251/lightbox/

Note how hydroelectric goes negative (pumped storage), and how coal and gas
stations are almost turned off. Also, international exchanges remained quite
low - the load balancing was done mostly inside Spain, without increasing
exports.

This is exactly what wind power can do - not replace 100% of your electrical
generation, but offset a significant percentage of fossil fuel generation.
Up to 50% on any given day (on a sizable country with 46m people) has
already been demonstrated in practice.

Alfio
<http://www.ree.es/ingles/sala_prensa/web/notas_detalle.aspx?id_nota=180>
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