Making wind power work in an integrated power system is a challenge that grows as the amount of wind resources rises. Hardly news, and it's hardly news, either, that natural gas plants are an easy and obvious solution to the intermittency problem that grid operators deal with.
California already has 1,000 MW of wind generation in its system, and more is coming. So the state's independent system operator is wrestling with the best way to deal with it, and with the increasing amount of solar energy expected to come online. Now, the ISO dispatches gas turbines to take up the slack when the wind dies down.
But ISO executive Steve Berberich thinks gas isn't the way to go.
Our colleague Mike Wilczek reports that Berberich, the ISO's vice president of technology & corporate services -- and its new chief financial officer as well -- told reporters at the National Press Club Monday that dispatching carbon-emitting gas generation to balance wind or solar output really defeats the purpose.
His preferred answer: storage.
The traditional storage option is large-scale pumped storage, and Berberich said it would play some role, but is unlikely because of the big locational and environmental obstacles it faces. The storage option of the future is batteries, he said. Big dry-cell batteries, like the 2-MW one that AES is testing at its Huntington Beach, California, facility in Southern California Edison territory. The unit has been online since last November.
Ideally, Berberich said, each wind farm would have a battery to help smooth its power output to the grid.
What about the batteries in electric cars or plug-in hybrids? Despite much ballyhooing of the idea over the past year from policymakers in Washington, Berberich was not optimistic about the prospects for car batteries being commandeered during the day to help load-balancing. Running people's car batteries down just doesn't sound like something that would go over too well, he suggested. Getting the cars to charge at night would be helpful, though, he said.
Berberich's other answer might be demand response. The ISO, like others, is working on ways to let demand participate in the market just as generation does. The ISO could dispatch load that had bid into the market, and have either the serving utility or a demand response aggregator adjust air-conditioning and lights to consume less power when the wind decides not to blow. It might be called reverse load-following: load follows generation instead of the other way around. This is one of the places where early "smart grid" moves are intersecting with the marketplace.
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