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Labs to help Xcel fine-tune wind power usage

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 4, 2009 at 9:37 a.m.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden tests wind turbines in January 2008. In front are two Southwest Windpower Skystream turbines. In the back left is a Northern Power Systems Northwind 100. An AOC1550 turbine is at back right.

Photo by Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky 2008

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden tests wind turbines in January 2008. In front are two Southwest Windpower Skystream turbines. In the back left is a Northern Power Systems Northwind 100. An AOC1550 turbine is at back right.

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All that ferocious Colorado winter wind won't go to waste - or to Kansas - under a new strategy to harness it and put it on the power grid.

The goal is to forecast the local weather so well that Xcel Energy knows exactly when to turn down the coal and gas power at its plants and let wind energy assume more of the burden.

Two national scientific centers in Colorado are working with the National Weather Service and Xcel Energy on the ambitious wind-energy plan.

The Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research Wednesday announced an agreement with Xcel Energy to provide highly detailed, localized weather forecasts to help the utility know when to rely on wind power.

And the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden will lend an important hand by developing mathematical formulas to calculate the amount of potential energy produced by winds blowing at various speeds.

NCAR will use cutting-edge computer models and other state-of-the-art tools to issue wind forecasts for wind farm sites every three hours.

If successful, the strategy could be adopted by wind farms across the country and around the world as nations turn to alternative renewable sources of power.

Wind power is a quintessential example of either use it - fast - or lose it.

Large amounts of electricity can't be stored cost effectively, so any power generated by a wind turbine must be promptly used.

To complicate matters, if the wind blows stronger or more erratically than forecast, the extra surge can overload a grid.

"Accurately forecasting our wind power generation will allow Xcel Energy to reliably bring on more wind energy and reduce costs at the same time," said Eric Pierce, Xcel Energy's managing director of energy trading.

Wind turbines 400 feet above the ground typically catch stronger winds than those measured by the National Weather Service at 33 feet above the ground.

Wind forecasts can be further complicated by such things as topography, ground cover, temperature inversions and even the number of leaves on nearby trees.

"Every wind turbine on the site will not have the same wind speed," said Erik Ela, NREL engineer. NREL's models will convert the wind speed into power "and give the utility better information on how much electricity the entire wind site will generate."

NCAR's prototype advanced wind prediction system will be rolled out over the next 18 months. By this August, it should begin generating forecasts for Xcel's wind farms in Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming.

NCAR will use satellites, aircraft, weather radars, ground- based weather radars and sensors in the wind turbines themselves.

All that information will be fed into NCAR's advanced computers, including the Real-Time Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation System.

Meanwhile, NREL's National Wind Technology Center north of Golden is testing General Electric's 1.5-megawatt turbine and soon will be testing Siemens Power's 2.3-megawatt turbine.

The blades of the 2.3-megawatt turbine have a diameter of more than a football field - about 330 feet, say NREL researchers.

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2897

Comments

  • February 5, 2009

    8:22 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    justright writes:

    Boy this sounds really cheap! I can't wait to tap into this free wind and watch my Xcel bill drop like a rock.