High Wind Power Penetration of Power Grid Is Possible, Study Finds

U.S. Wind Power Installed Capacity in 2007 by State

The findings of a two-and-a-half year technical study of future high-penetration wind scenarios were released today by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) .  The study assessed the economic, operational, and technical implications of shifting 20 percent or more of the Eastern Interconnection’s electrical load to wind energy by the year 2024.

“To put the scale of this study in perspective, consider that just over 70 percent of the U.S. population gets its power from the Eastern Interconnect. Incorporating high amounts of wind power in the Eastern grid goes a long way towards clean power for the whole country,” aid David Corbus, NREL project manager for the study. “We can bring more wind power online, but if we don’t have the proper infrastructure to move that power around, it’s like buying a hybrid car and leaving it in the garage.”

The study’s key findings included the following:

  • Integration of 20 percent wind energy is technically feasible, but will require significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure and system operational changes in order for it to be realized;
  • Without transmission enhancements, substantial curtailment of wind generation would be required for all 20 percent wind scenarios studied;
  • Producing wind energy from a larger geographic area makes it both less expensive and a more reliable energy source – increasing the geographic diversity of wind power projects in a given operating pool makes the aggregated wind power output more predictable and less variable;
  • Wind energy development is a highly cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions – as more wind energy comes online, less energy from fossil-fuel burning plants is required, reducing greenhouse gas emissions
  • The relative cost of aggressively expanding the existing transmission grid represents only a small portion of the total annualized costs in any of the scenarios studied;
  • Carbon emissions are reduced by similar amounts in all scenarios;
  • Reduced fossil fuel expenditures more than pay for the increased costs of additional transmission in all high wind scenarios.

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