Solar & Wind Power – Future Energy
The biggest tasks facing utilities when they find more climate friendly ways to create electricity and integrate greenhouse gas free solar and wind energy in electric power grid is to adopt another option in keeping the stream of electricity going when the sun tend to stop shining and the wind stops blowing.Energy storage is the answer which means the use of batteries or other technology like flywheels in order to capture renewable energy enabling it to flow in the power grid whenever required. Solar and wind power are part of the future energy and this form of energy is irregular which could be a big challenge for expansion. However there is a change and due to Big Data and artificial intelligence that are producing ultra-accurate forecast, it is feasible in integrating more renewable energy in the grid. Whether it is wind turbines, solar parks, or biomass facilities, additional power comes from distributed and volatile sources though the availability of wind and solar energy is based on the weather and the time of the day. Smart girds in the future, with innovative storage technologies as well as energy management system will help in making use of renewables when they are required and to keep the power network stable.
Wind Power Forecast – More Renewable Energy
Wind power is flourishing on the open plains of eastern Colorado and in the town of Limon on Highway 71 on the east of County road 3p in the vicinity, one will find towering wind turbine stretching in rows for miles. Large wind farms have been built,three in number, in that area since 2011 while a new one is presumed to come up this year.Most of the hundreds of turbines, every few seconds, tend to record the wind speed and its own power output.Data to high performance computers 100 miles from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research –NCAR in Boulder is despatched every five minutes and there the artificial intelligence based software heads the numbers together with the data from weather satellites, weather stations as well as other farms in the region. The outcome is that the wind power forecast of unprecedented precision makes it possible for Colorado to usemore renewable energy, at a lower cost, than utilities thought possible.
Challenges of Wind Power – Intermittency
Cost of wind power had grown more than double from 2009 and the forecast are enabling power companies to deal with greater challenges of wind power – its intermittency. For utilities, usage of small amount of wind power is not a problem and they are habituated in dealing with variability, since demand for electricity tend to change from season to season and from minute to minute. Nevertheless, utility which needs to use more wind power needs backup power in order to protect against sudden loss of wind and these backup plants which burn fossil fuel tend to be expensive. However, with more accurate forecasts, utilities could reduce the amount of power needed to be held in reserve thus reducing its role. Solar power generation tends to delay wind power production by a decade. NCAR’s early version of forecasting system had been released in 2009, though last year was a leap forward of accuracy improved significantly where the forecast saved Xcel of much money since they had the previous three years combined. NCAR, this year will be testing a similar forecast system for solar power.
