Wind power grid could meet all electricity needs

content.usatoday.com
Apr 06, 2010

Offshore wind turbines, if spread out and connected to a power grid, could potentially produce enough electricity to meet global needs, says a new study. A grid that connects turbines could eliminate the unsteadiness that is currently wind power's biggest drawback, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. "Making wind-generated electricity more steady will enable wind power to become a much larger fraction of our electric sources," said lead author Willett Kempton, director of the University Of Delaware's Center for Carbon-free Power Integration.

The researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University looked at five years of wind speed data from 11 monitoring stations - - buoys and towers - - along the U.S. East Coast from Florida to Maine. They used this data to estimate the power output from a hypothetical five-MW offshore turbine. Each turbine, when operating individually, showed the expected power ups and downs, reflective of local weather patterns.

"But when we simulate a power line connecting them, called here the Atlantic Transmission Grid, the output from the entire set of generators rarely reaches either low or full power, and power changes slowly," the study says. "Notably, during the 5-year study period, the amount of power shifted up and down but never stopped." The authors recommend a coordinated approach for siting and connecting wind turbines, noting that electricity generation is now primarily a state matter. Currently, no wind turbines are located in U.S, waters, but several East Coast projects have been proposed.