Wind storms that hit Spain during last Wednesday 18th April had his friendly face being responsible for the record of daily electricity production from wind energy.
According to Red Electrica of Spain website, the electricity production from wind power reached the highest records in instant, hourly and daily energy.
The maximum instant power was recorded at 16:41 hours on 16636 MW.
We must stress that not only the wind storms have responsibility in this record production of electricity but the continued growth and expansion of wind farms,it is also responsible for these new production records
Wind energy is a free, renewable, clean and non-polluting source of energy.
Unlike conventional power plants, wind plants emit no air pollutants or greenhouse gases.
Even though the cost of wind power has decreased in the past 10 years, the technology requires a high initial investment .
However, the operating costs are really low.
Although wind plants have relatively little impact on the environment, there is some preoccupation over the noise produced by the rotor lates. Some birds and bats have been killed when they were flying into the rotors.
However, the wind is intermitent and doesn't always blow when electricity is needed. Wind can not be stored. Further, good wind sites are often located in remote locations far from areas of electric power demand.
These problems can be solved with technological development. The wind turbines can be located on lands that are also used for farming. So these lands might be more profitable.
Camino,
ResponderEliminarIn an electric power system there must be always a perfect balance between production and consumption. If one of those terms vary, the other must follow automatically.
One big problem with wind energy, appart from the matter of the birds and bats, is that it is not a reliable source of energy. In a few hours, wind production can raise or fall up to 5.000 MW or 6.000 MW, and as it is a preferent energy, similar power must be switched off or on from conventional fossil fuel plants. And this is not always technically achievable, so the fact is that several fossil fuel power plants must be switched to the grid, but in minimum load, ready to back up volatile power from wind farms.
When a power plant is working at minimum load, its efficiency decreases very rapidly, and this has an impact in the emissions of CO2. Beside, there is a high economic cost that has to be beared by the system along with the subsidizing to the wind energy itself, and finally paid by the customers, or securitized in the shape of "déficit de tarifa", of which you have probably heard about.
I do not pretend to dissuade you from your vision of a world powered by clean renewable energy, but I think that an intelligent person like you, must be critical with the news coming from the media, and learn to look deeply in the facts, further than just the shining headlines.
It is clear that wind energy saves a lot of emissions, but it is important to know that it also has a big cost, and that things are not as simple as leaving the mills turn. Then, choosing is up to us.