Stan, Check the figures for Cape Wind Associates (Cape Cod). If the plan is still 130 turbines, peak power of 2 GW seems improbable as it requires 15+ MW windturbines. The original plan was GE 3 MW wind turbines, totalling around 400 MW. While maximum size may have increased a little, I don't think anyone is making 15 MW windturbines. (I have not followed their plans for a while, so there may be changes I'm unaware of) Natural gas turbines could probably take up the wind slack. I got to tour a DTE plant a few years ago. Two coal fired boilers and steam turbines each producing 600 MW and 7 gas turbines each producing 100 MW on the same property (total plant, 1900 MW). They ran the gas turbines selectively as peakers to take up demand, and tried to run the coal plants continuously. The gas turbines can be started and stopped pretty quickly although you would have to keep one on spinning reserve at all times I imagine. These are just details for your consideration. I agree with your main points. Wind power is virtually unschedulable, and if you try to schedule them based on forecasts, you can't count on them to deliver. At least in a desert, solar is pretty schedulable as you know when sunrise and sunset are.
--- On Fri, 3/23/12, Stanislav Jakuba <[email protected]> wrote: From: Stanislav Jakuba <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51555] Data in SI To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, March 23, 2012, 7:12 PM Converting values to SI and resorting to the unit for power instead of using energy units and time units makes energy articles easier to read and compare numbers. Particularly if the rule for printing-significant-digits-only is observed. All this is observed in the attached, so-simplified, treatises. To get the joke in the "TR El", read the Denmark section in tthe "Wind" first. Stan Jakuba
