Paging Don Quixote: Spain’s New Wind-Power Record

2009 Nov 10

By Keith Johnson

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, Spain set quite a record: The country got more than half its electricity from wind farms, a first for a country long invested in renewable energy.

Between 4:30 and 6 a.m., Spanish wind turbines took advantage of a particluarly windy day to generate 53% of the electricity coursing through the grid. Spain had never gotten more than 43% of its juice from wind power before. It suddenly had so much wind power, it had to export some electricity.

Yes, that’s an amazing feat. For years, one of the knocks against wind power is that it can only provide a certain part of a country’s electricity—25% or so—because wind power is too variable. So Spain’s windy Sunday seems to make U.S. visions of generating 20% of the country’s electricity from wind power sound a little less far-fetched.

However, Spain’s record also shows exactly why wind power still thrives at the edges—not the center—of the energy debate.

The record was set in pre-dawn hours, a time the electricity grid operator describes as “minimum demand.” For the whole day, wind power’s contribution slipped to a (still-impressive) 39%. For the whole year, wind power provides just over 12% of Spain’s electricity.

That Sunday was genuinely the high-water mark for Spanish wind-power production, and its 18 gigawatts of installed turbines produced a little over 11 gigawatts of electricity. That’s about 60%. That means that in the absolute best-case scenario, two out of every five megawatts of wind power are essentially sitting idle.

The fact that wind power works hardest just when people need the least power is, clearly, one of the things that sets it apart from traditional power sources and even solar power, which works best right during times of peak afternoon demand.

Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/10/paging-don-quixote-spains-new-wind-power-record/

Want to help with Global-Warming? Please visit http://www.whiteearth.org

Please become a fan of the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/WhiteEarthorg/119367692642 and http://www.facebook.com/pages/WhiteEarth/165767310764

Become a friend on Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/christopherbeau

Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/christopherbeau

Become a follower of this blog

When you buy art on http://www.artsymphony.com 100% of your investment goes to sponsor WhiteEarth