Page 256 - Fluid Power Engineering

Deploying W i nd T urbines in Grid 223

Overall, connecting Wind power to an existing grid does not pose
significant operational issues as long as: (i) wind penetration levels
into the grid are low, and (ii) grid has sufficient spinning reserves
with high response rates. As the size of wind plants increases to
500-MW+ and approaches the size of traditional fossil-based power
plants and wind energy penetration is higher than 20%, then integra-
tion with grid and management of the variability of wind resource
becomes a bigger challenge.
The US Department of Energy released a technical report in 2008
2
“20% Wind Energy by 2030” that explores one scenario for reaching
the goal of 20% wind energy by 2030 and compares it to a scenario of
no new US wind power capacity. Its findings were:

To achieve 20% wind energy on the grid, 300 GW of wind

generation would be required
Cost to integrate this amount of wind energy is modest

2% additional investment would be required for 20% wind

scenario
50 cents increase per month, on average, household electricity

bill
50% reduction in natural gas consumption by electric utilities

Avoid construction of 80 GW of coal power plants

Reduction in CO 2 emissions of 825 million metric tons annu-

ally by 2030
Cut water consumption by electricity sector by 17%, which is

450 billion gallons annually by 2030
Additional transmission would be required; transmission is a

big bottleneck in remote wind-rich areas
United States has affordable and accessible wind resource to

achieve 20% wind scenario
3
Another study done for the Southwest Power Pool by the Charles
River Associates concludes: “The analytical results of the study show
that there are no significant technical barriers to integrating wind gen-
eration to a 20% penetration level into the SPP system, provided that
sufficient transmission is built to support it.”

“Scheduling” and Dispatch of Wind Resources
Electricity grid operators use a method of day-ahead scheduling of
generation resources in order to do short-term planning of matching
supply (generation) and demand (load). Simplistically, at any given
point of time, there cannot be imbalances on the grid, that is, supply