[ExI] Efficiency of wind power.

[spike]

>...On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
Subject: Re: [ExI] Efficiency of wind power.

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 09:11:24PM -0700, spike wrote:

>> There are some places where wind power definitely does pay and does make
sense...

>There is another transportation problem of sorts: producing more power than
the grid can be absorbed...

I witnessed that on my vacation in Washington state last summer.  We had
several days in a row when the wind was steady and blowing like hell.  The
local newspaper commented that they were running the power wires at about 5%
above maximum design capacity, and they dared not smoke them any higher than
that.  This went on for several days.  We drove west to east through the
Columbia Gorge with a steady 50 mph tailwind.  My wife drove a two axle
trailer at 80 mph and got better fuel economy than the truck normally gets
unburdened.  That day she could have turned off the motor and let the wind
push her down the road.

> At the moment the operators shut down the turbines, but it would make more
sense to dump the surplus into water electrolysis...

Ja, but only if the facilities are in place to use the hydrogen and oxygen
for something.

> ... or in making synthetic octane from coal...

If you don't need the energy from coal you do not need the coal as carbon
source, either. Also: peak coal.

The coal to octane wouldn't need to be a huge operation, or even necessarily
competitive with refined crude.  Where this would come into play is in
taking advantage of existing octane burning infrastructure, and the fact
that octane is easily transported arbitrary distances using existing
infrastructure.  I see it as being used to skim off peak power from PV farms
and large wind installations that are way the hell out from population
centers.  Regarding peak coal: the total amount of coal used is relatively
small if the energy source is supplied by some external source, rather than
burning coal itself to convert coal to octane.

spike