Sunday, 27 November 2016

Renewable energy & the national grid



Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA)

Around the world, national power grids have evolved to distribute power from sources such as coal, oil & nuclear fired generation. Such sources have come to be known as, “base load”. With ~100 years of development, these systems have become very good at balancing load & supply.

More recently, new understandings, have forced a rethink. Most obvious of these is climate change, but also important has been a growing understanding of the other costs & dangers of base load.

Renewable sources of energy avoid the dangers of fossil & nuclear, but present a new set of problems which have to be overcome.

“All of our research has shown that being part of a large integrated power system makes renewable integration easier.”

“Denmark & Germany have been very successful at balancing the variability of their renewable resources because they are strongly interconnected with other countries in Europe & imports & exports minute by minute, hour by hour & day by day can balance the variability of the renewables.”

“Renewables are variable – there are clouds & the wind goes up & down, but renewables are actually very predictable. We can predict renewables a day ahead. We know what the weather will be like tomorrow & so we can actually predict the output of wind & solar tomorrow with a high degree of accuracy … California, Germany, Denmark, Spain have all evolved very advanced day-ahead weather forecasting to predict accurately, the output of the wind & solar, so that they can be accommodated & scheduled properly.”

Stream or podcast all of the above & more at:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/renewable-energy-and-the-national-grid/7987134
/ renewable sustainable energy electricity power generation renewables solar wind turbine photovoltaic photo-voltaic PV solar hydro electricity hydro-electricity storage battery pumped hydro /