"Makani AWTs will produce energy at an unsubsidized real cost competitive with coal-fired power plants, the current benchmark of the lowest cost source of power."
If this is true, it could be huge. Would these be deployable basically anywhere that is reasonably open?
In the "Fundamentals" section of the website (http://www.makanipower.com/concept/fundamentals/) Makani claims that their system can operate in 85% of the areas in the US vs. traditional windmills that need class 4 wind which is only present in 15% of areas in the US. Also there is some interesting info about why their approach could be better for offshore wind generation.
I know some of the Makani guys and they are the real deal. These guys are seriously smart, and talented. I am glad everything is going so well for them.
I suspect there may be some voodoo hidden in that term "real cost" -- i.e. it's dependent on some "cost" of CO2 emissions which they've derived ex anum.
No, even at altitude wind is fairly local phenomenon. As the price of wind power drops, more places become competitive with coal, but the best drip below the price of coal. http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp
Edit: You also need to transport that energy, so while much of the Midwest above average resources powering L.A. with that energy would would require a lot of new power lines.
Is the US grid system really in that miserable of a state? It seems to work just fine where I live. And is the right solution really building more power lines? It's not clear to me why that would solve any potential problem with the system, other than that more power needs to be transported than can currently be. And if that is so, how do things work at all now?
The best places for generating (conventional) wind power in the US are the prairie states, and the best places for generating solar power are in the Southwest. But since both of these regions are sparsely populated, there isn’t very much grid infrastructure there—there is enough to bring power to the people who do live there, but not enough to handle taking power from a power plant to population centers farther away.
Also, if a substantial portion of our power supply is going to come from intermittently available sources, then the switching technology in the grid is going to have to be a little more sophisticated.
I'm fine with the idea that more lines would have to be built in the case of wind-power. That's not what I was questioning. I was questioning the claim that the US power grid is in a "miserable state" for current applications, which is a notion I see bandied about a lot with nary a citation.
Also would you please describe what about the switching technology in the grid is going to have to get better? Or cite some source that does so?
I think this is basically what people mean by “miserable state”. It’s not just more lines, but more very-very-high-voltage lines. Also, these lines are generally regulated at the state level: the government of Nebraska may not be exactly eager to authorize a high-tension swath being cut through its land just so that power can get from North Dakota to Texas.
Regarding switching technology, Technology Review had an article a while ago (http://www.technologyreview.com/microsites/spain/wind/) mentioning the wind-power industry in Spain: “Because wind is an intermittent resource, providing power only when it blows, the grid has to be able to cope with fluctuations and dips in electricity. When wind accounted for only a small percentage of the country’s power, such dips made little difference. But as this resource achieved greater prominence, split-second losses of power could have caused problems, especially since Spain doesn’t have strong grid connections with neighboring countries....” The article goes on to describe how the grid management system adapts to this problem.
OK, I still haven't seen any evidence that the US's system is relatively miserable. Am I not clearly asking for what I want? Articles about how Spain's grid system adapts to wind power don't do much to prove the point that I'm questioning.
The fact that the grid still works most of the time for most of the people doesn't proove that the grid is in good shape, in my point of view. Yes, it worked, and it still works. But the US missed to invest in its infrastructure - roads, bridges, water, just to name a few besides the grid - in the last couple of decades. This might be cheap on the short term, but it's going to be even more expensive in the future. The US has a critical investment deficite regarding its infrastructure, including the grid.
'In August 2003, the power failure that affected 50 million people in the United States and Canada was not caused by a single extraordinary event on a single system, but rather a series of routine events that quickly became unmanageable because of an aging electricity distribution system lacking redundancy. National laboratories and others that have evaluated the weak points in our energy infrastructure have identified similar scenarios where a seemingly modest, routine occurrence can cascade into a debilitating energy supply disruption in very short order.'
- http://www.energyxxi.org/pages/Blueprint_Modernize_and_Prote...
> The fact that the grid still works most of the time for most of the people doesn't proove . . .
That's not what needs to be proven. The opposite does. The default assumption is that something that works is working. It's the responsibility of those who disagree with that point of view -- those who claim that the grid is underdeveloped -- to prove that it's broken.
> But the US missed to invest in its infrastructure
By what metric?
> This might be cheap on the short term, but it's going to be even more expensive in the future.
That's not how these kinds of things usually work. Usually the longer you can put off an upgrade, the cheaper it is to maintain a system when you amortize it. And I can't see why this would be any different in the grid (or roads, or whatever else).
> [Your quote from the Institute for 21st Century Energy]
This
* doesn't cite any sources, and
* is a lobbying group whose members stand to benefit financially from me accepting their claims uncritically.
Which means that the last thing I am going to do is accept their claims uncritically.
>> But the US missed to invest in its infrastructure
> By what metric?
I'm not a civil engineer, and I don't know if anybody can tell reliable numbers at all for that issue. But the US infrastructure hasn't received proper maintenance in the last decades if one can trust certain studies. And this is getting serious for some areas in the next couple of years.
Looking at the downward trend for most cathegorized domains since 2001 is not a good sign for US infrastructure. One may say that everybody involved in that business has his own interests (government(s), construction businesses, consultancies i.e.) and is trying to defend them or make profit out of certain decisions. But stretching the infrastructure to the upper limit of the designed lifetime without proper maintenance until then just accumulates infrastructure investments, mostly towards a higher figure. (It's always difficult to find reliable sources regarding that issue, with a lot of lobbying going on in that area. In that case I simply trust the American Society of Civil Engineers for judging about that issue because my own lack of knowledge and expertise.)
> That's not how these kinds of things usually work. Usually the longer you can put off an upgrade, the cheaper it is to maintain a system when you amortize it. And I can't see why this would be any different in the grid (or roads, or whatever else).
It's not only about the equipment working until or even over the designed lifespan and/or just replacing them, but the aging grid is characterized by a couple of points. There's an interesting book called 'Aging power delivery infrastructures' from Willis et al. (2001) about it: http://books.google.com/books?id=1GcxSDpvdzYC
Basically in that book the authors point out 5 main factors: 1. Old equipment, 2. Obsolete system layouts, 3. Old engineering methods, 4. Uncoordinated and non-optimal use of distribution, 5. Old cultures and ideas.
I think there hasn't been any major improvements since the release of the book, at least no I'm aware of. And this is definitely not an US-only issue. But I think there's definitely a need of rethinking and reengineering the power grid.
It will be a big effort for western industrialized nations to bring the grid, which is mostly pre-70's, into the new century. And just by pushing the lifetime of this old and inefficient grid doesn't make it cheaper (higher failure rates, inefficient equipment, blackouts, i.e.) in the future.
I read in Perfect Power, that the average age of major step-down and step-up transformers is over forty years and that they were only rated for forty years. Ditto for the high voltage transmission lines. This infrastructure cost something like 550 billion to install and would cost over two trillion to replace.
You hit the nail on the head with your "over two trillion to replace" number: why replace them if they are still working? If expected cost of failures (probability of failure * number of things that could fail * cost of failure) is lower than the cost of replacement, it would be stupid to replace them. I will consider it a resounding success if these old transformers are still transforming away forty _more_ years from now.
Well, a few things come to mind: The utilities have customers, most of whom should expect that the utility will do what they can to avoid power failures, not just sit around and wait for them to happen. Also, apparently, the quality of power is pretty poor; lost of surges and unclean waveforms. Finally, the grid is unsuited going forward for more local and regional power generation (microgrids), because it was built for giant bulk power providers to transmit power over long distances, which made sense fifty years ago, but not as much today.
All of this is from Perfect Power. I'm trying to sort out, myself, how much of this is hyperbole on the part of companies with a stake in re-making the electrical power industry, and how much is legit (carbon tax/credits come to mind as potentially illegitimate).
> The utilities have customers, most of whom should expect that the utility will do what they can to avoid power failures, not just sit around and wait for them to happen
Obviously if the equipment were unsafe or likely to fail frequently, it should be replaced. I have yet to see this demonstrated.
> Also, apparently, the quality of power is pretty poor; lost of surges and unclean waveforms.
I don't think I know anyone who would be willing to pay more on their bill in order to get cleaner waveforms.
> Finally, the grid is unsuited going forward for more local and regional power generation
Is that really true? I know that in many places in California, it's possible to put power back into the grid and get paid back from the utility company.
It's miserable. The fact that it works (usually) just hides the fact that it's fragile and very leaky.
A friend of mine who does large-scale systems designs (he designs power and cooling systems for little things like international airports and the Gates Foundations new buildings) once said that our current power lines sacrifice close to 30% of the energy that they're supposed to be transmitting. By any rational measure in this day and age, that alone qualifies our grid as "crap" already, but the fact that a software bug shut down most of New England for several days three or four years ago doesn't cast any positive light on our pitifully outdated infrastructure.
> A friend of mine who does large-scale systems designs (he designs power and cooling systems for little things like international airports and the Gates Foundations new buildings) once said that our current power lines sacrifice close to 30% of the energy that they're supposed to be transmitting.
"Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995 [13] and 6.5% in 2007[14]. In general, losses are estimated from the discrepancy between energy produced (as reported by power plants) and energy sold to end customers; the difference between what is produced and what is consumed constitute transmission and distribution losses."
My physics is getting a bit foggy, but I'm pretty sure I remember a lecture in which we were told that 30% transmission efficiency is actually about the best we can achieve with current materials science (without going to insanely expensive exotic solutions that don't scale or require non-room-temperature conditions).
This is part of why the idea of switching from big centralized power-plants to small localized plants is a big potential win.
If this is true, it could be huge. Would these be deployable basically anywhere that is reasonably open?