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Originally Posted by UtahBill  I understand all that, but what do we use for peaking power? Do we dismantle all the combined cycle gas turbine peaking power plants, the ones that are the best at coming on line quickly?
With wind power, we need peaking plants all the more.....when the wind stops, we need something to come on line, more or less instantly.
We can't take gas away from our peaking plants and maintain the availability that we currently enjoy. |
That type of math has to be done by people smarter than me. But the thing is to overbuild. Having built the existing gas peaking plants is an example of that. Install more than you need to cover for the times when capacity is high and normal output is inadequate. Even keep a minimal number of the gas peaking plants operational as backup for wind turbine power and existing coal generation, etc.
...use a probability-based estimate of wind contribution during important periods, taking into account a long wind resource record, and install, for example, a 20 MW backup? In this way the utility can rely not only on the installed wind backup (gas or whatever), but on the natural diversity of outages in other units. This reasoning is roughly the justification for the ubiquitous use of the 7% spinning reserve fraction, which requires the utility to spin an additional 7% over its load. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy96/20493.pdf