What’s wrong with this picture of daily electricity output from wind power in Ontario (note: each day is a different color and all the days  are overlaid on each other using a standard clock (i.e. 1 = 1 a.m., 12 = noon, etc.)

Thirty Day View of Hourly Wind Power Output

If you happen to be a utility forced to implement a renewable portfolio standard for renewable energy, a lot
Imagine having thirty pre-schoolers, each with a different color crayon, with one art teacher saying draw a squiggly line, this will be your wind energy output for your day…

Not only is this bad art, it’s bad energy (from a load balancing perspective that is).

Now don’t get me wrong, I love wind energy, but….

This beauty depicts the hourly output of wind energy coming onto the Ontario power grid – courtesy of Ken Kozlik, Chief Operating Officer of Indpendent Electricity System Operator, as presented at GridWeek, 2009 (conference presentation: Getting Renewables into the Home: Enabling Consumer Choice). It shows the volatile nature of electricity generation from wind. Month by month, day by day, hour by hour, even minute by minute, you can clearly see that wind energy is all over the place. This is a big problem for grid operators trying to balance power supply and energy demand – especially if they rely heavily on so-called “base load” power plants, like coal plants, hydro or nuclear. A very expensive solution is to have a fleet of expensive natural gas peaking power plants – rapid response natural gas fired turbines – standing by to kick-in on a moments notice. Another choice is to keep baseload turbines spinning (so-called “spinning reserve”) without generating electricity. But this is waste.
In reality, most utilities need to do both – in increasing amounts – as they are forced to take on more and more wind in an effort, ironically, to save the environment.
There’s another interesting twist to wind turbines – as wind velocity picks up, they come up the power generation curve relatively quickly, but suddenly cut-out when the wind blows too fast. Cut-off protects rotor motors from burning out, and blades from torsional stress. Check this beauty out, courtesy of Ali Ipakchi and Farrokh Albuyeh in their March, 2009 Grid of the Future article in Power & Energy Magazine (see page 7).  Note how power comes up a nice curve at low wind speeds, then suddenly cuts out. 

Wind Power Comes on Strong, but then Cuts Out in High Wind Conditions

Imagine that you’re the owner of a horse in the Kentucky Derby - it’s sprinting along in first place, you’re on the road to riches, then bonk, the horse just stops running right there, in the middle of the track.  Sounds kind of unlikely huh?  Not with wind.

At this point, a wind energy expert is likely to jump up, raise their hand and say, “wait a minute, that’s why we have sophisticated weather equipment (read anemometers in strategic locations in points a couple miles each direction from a wind farm).  Right, but where does that data go?  To a smart digital grid where load smoothly glides up and down thanks to a lovely power balancing algorithm that takes in data from points asunder?  This digitally enabled intelligent power grid future is just that, a future, that will take a lot of time, money, brilliant technologists and forward-thinking utilities a long time to get to.  More likely, the data will be just one more confusing source of noise for a roomful of grid operators frantically working to balance load and demand signals coming from a cacophony of inconsistent digital and analog devices, substations, commercial customers, distributed energy sources and whatnot. 

Yes, the smart grid will help, but energy storage needs to be part of the picture too. 

My point here is not to shred wind power, wind energy is a good thing.  It doesn’t pollute – at a turbine level.  The problem is that, at a system level, wind is not a panacea, it’s a challenge.  An incredibly complicated challenge – to harness in a way that actually reduces pollution and fossil fuel consumption to a significant degree.

Some would argue that putting up turbines and connecting them into the grid is the cheap part.  The expensive part is going to be integrating those assets seamlessly into an intelligent grid infrastructure that will make maximum advantage of the good clean energy that wind provides.