Tag Archive for 'wind energy'

Using Energy Demand Management to increase wind energy in Ireland

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 15/10/2007
in energy
. 18 Comments

Wind energy currently contributes around 6.5% of the electricity generation in Ireland. The government has committed to increasing this to 33% by 2025.

That is a good thing, right? Well yes, but it brings with it some problems which will have to be addressed before it can become a reality.

In 2006 the minimum demand on the electrical grid was 1.8GW (think 4am on a summer’s morning) and the maximum demand was 5GW (winter’s evening between 5pm and 7pm).

The wind energy output during 2006 varied from 0% (on a calm day) to 0.9GW or just over 45% (think 4am in the middle of a windy night).

Projections are that by 2025 the maximum electrical demand will be 10GW and the minimum will be 3.6GW. The governments plans to increase the wind energy means that the maximum wind energy output will be 6.3GW. If this happens when the country only needs 3.6GW there will be a surplus of 2.7GW.

On the other hand if the maximum demand of 10GW happens on a calm day (not unusual) there will need to be 10GW of generating capacity on the grid.

How do we facilitate this? We can’t control the supply (the wind blows, or it doesn’t!) but we can think about starting to manage the demand.

Imagine if EirGrid, the Energy grid operator, could control the diesel generators of any companies who own them. They could switch them on, thereby reducing the overall demand on the grid at times of electrical supply shortage.

Taken a step further, if EirGrid had control of the thermostats in refrigeration plants or in the hot water tanks of larger companies, they could ratchet them up or down one or two degrees to either consume extra electricity or to reduce demand.

Taken to a logical conclusion, plug-in hybrid cars, smart domestic appliances (fridges, clothes dryers, dish washers, etc.) and central heating could all be used to help stabilise the grid and allow more wind energy come onstream.

Blog action day

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 15/10/2007
in carbon neutrality and climate change
. 0 Comments

Today (15-10-2007) is Blog Action Day - a day when people who are concerned about the environment post something related to this topic on their blogs.

I’ll be publishing a post later today about ways to increase the penetration of wind energy into the Irish Energy market.

No James, we Irish are not complete gobshites

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/9/2007
in carbon neutrality and climate change
. 16 Comments

Or if we are, it is not for the reasons James thinks! James Corbett has a post today on his blog asking “Are we Irish complete gobshites?“. The post is lamenting the fact that we are not building wind farms to reduce our dependence on oil imports.

I would answer James in the comment section on his blog but

  1. the answer is complex and
  2. he has deployed a CAPTCHA on his blog which means commenting there is a pain :-P

I have talked about this in several of my talks about reducing ITs carbon footprint.

There are >2gW of outstanding applications for windfarms to come onto the electrical grid in Ireland. To put that in context, we typically use around 4.5gW of power in Ireland (fluctuating day/night and summer/winter, obviously). However, these applications are being held at bay by eirgrid, the grid management company.

Why are they holding these applications at bay? Are they rabidly anti-green? Maybe they are pro climate-change? No, the reason Eirgrid don’t want any more wind power on the grid is because it de-stabilises the network.

Consider the following scenario. It is 2am. Electricity demand across the country is at its lowest. There is a 40mph wind blowing across the country. Wind energy at this point can be supplying up to 30% of the country’s demand.

What happens now if the wind picks up to 50mph? The wind farms shut down to protect their mechanisms and suddenly Eirgrid are left scrambling trying to bring gas turbine stations online to meet the sudden fall-off of 30% of their supply. Gas turbine stations can take up to an hour to reach full generation capacity.

The more windfarms Eirgrid take onto the network, the greater a problem this becomes. Unless there was some kind of ready counter-balance to the instability of wind farms…

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