Worth a visit too, the actual engineering is quite awesome.

http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=8350 covered this a while back.

As someone who works in the field of wind and PV, I found the central thesis of your article rather questionable, as it focusses on one aspect of siting (placing installations in the right place to deliver energy at peak demand times) which in the matrix of all other relevant factors determining the location and production of renewable energy is not necessarily decisive. There are two reasons for this:

1.    Particularly with wind turbines, environmental impact, local politics, leasehold opportunities, feed-in tariffs, planning policy, and available network capacity in the local grid factor more than what exact time the wind is blowing.
I am assuming that all these other issues will be part of your book, but, irrespective of that, the particular theme here cannot be considered in isolation from the bigger picture.

2.    The other underlying issue which you raise is balancing production and demand on the grid. There are at least four other factors which are decisive this respect, none of which you mention, even to say that they need also to be considered. These are

i) Grid structure and capacity
Almost all extant grids are star-like in structure. ie they fan out from central nodes where there are large facilities. They have been designed to deliver power from large facilities and distribute it out. The renewable grid needs to look completely different to balance capacity needs. And it needs to be smart. That’s what needs to be built all over the world if renewables are to really grow and of course it will only happen incrementally if at all, and as a result of decisive government policy. There are 8 time zones across the States as well as enormous capacity potential, so all the metric for a grid with great balancing capability. But the US is, as with most things renewable, the last car in the race even though its got the biggest engine. That’s because the US electricity grid is not only very nodal but also very fragmented and central government is too dysfunctional to be able to implement national grid investment policy. An integrated, smart grid would balance supply and demand differences more than the optimization of location you are discussing. HVDC Supercable, European Supergrid – thugs sort of thing. And Smart grid too, on top of all this.

ii) Network balancing
You say in the comments that there are no technological solutions for storage of overcapacity. HEP stations are batteries – they pump water up at night using cheap electricity, run it through the turbines at peak times to balance network imbalances. In combination with the use of load difference across the grid, this is an important wax that grid load balancing is done. The key to increasing renewable energy on the grid is the combination of production capacity with grid balancing installations. You should investigate the Norwegian fjord installations which are being used to balance European grid capacity through things such as the NorNed HVDC line (completely privately financed and already amorticised after I think 4 years on line).

iii) Tariff control
In it’s crudest form, network imbalance is traditionally managed with flexi-tariffs to stimulate off-peak use. France is the best example of this as they have the biggest issue with it due to the enormous night-time overcapacity they have because of all the nuclear production (which, quite apart from EVERYTHING else with nuclear, is a massive contributor to network imbalance). The french balance their enormous night-time oversupply with very cheap night-time consumer tariffs. With a smart grid comes the potential for smart tariffs, ie feed-in and consumer tariffs which adjust continuously according to network load. If, as they will, the buildings of the future will all be producers as well as consumers, a smart meter can decide whether it is most economical for produced capacity to be utilized locally or fed into the grid, depending on the momentary feed-in and consumer tariffs, if you get what I mean.

iv) Production mix
One production form should never be looked at in isolation from the production mix. I mean this in respect of other renewable forms, rather than as an excuse for continued fossil fuel dominance. If you only see wind turbines in isolation as the means to deliver electricity at peak times, you can draw conclusions which become dubious when seen in the overall context. In the example you use, Texas, the PV potential is enormous, so the energy requirements during the day are best served with PV capacity. But the sun doesn’t shine at night. In this context, the potential of the Great Plains Low Level Jet starts to look very different, as, in combination with PV capacity, it may be advantageous the wind turbines whose production peaks in the night may be just what the grid actually needs. This would largely invalidate your location argument. You see what I’m getting at.

To sum up, optimal siting is only one factor and actually not the most important.

Hope that’s helpful and I look forward to the book.

Best,

Ernst Gruengast

Bullion of the sky. Etherial tea.

Why do I have a sudden urge to head out to the cement pond?

And, there are various methods of energy storage that can be used, as well, to feed the energy to the grid during lulls in output.