BPA Formalizing Plans to Curtail Excess Wind Energy in Oversupply

March 30th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

Oregon’s Bonneville Power Administration has filed a request to curtail wind generators without payment when there is surplus power on the grid from hydro and wind, according to a report by Mark Ohrenschall at Energy Prospects.

The newly announced plan is proving controversial with wind developers, unsurprisingly. A New York Times article last month estimated that wind generators could lose as much as $50 million per year under worst-case conditions of excess generation and limited transmission capacity to export power out of the region.

Wind farm developer Iberdrola Renewables wrote that the status of wind developers “as relative newcomers to the region should not deprive them of all the rights embedded in law, policy and contracts when difficulties loom.”

“All the region’s interests and stakeholders should do more than cast a wary eye on Bonneville’s proposals in this proceeding — they should collectively repudiate this arbitrary, discriminatory, and illegal proposal,” Iberdrola said.

The Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition called the draft ROD “an avoidable, and presumably inadvertent, instance of blaming the victim.”

Numerous commenters said the policy would hinder regional wind development and lead to problems financing projects and achieving renewables portfolio standards. From this perspective, the policy also would conflict with federal and other policies encouraging new renewables, which BPA is obliged to follow.

BPA has had to shut down wind farms several times (most recently during a storm in June) as there was too much energy on the grid due to high river levels and high winds combined with low demand. Electricity has to be used immediately, and when there is more being put on the grid than is being taken off and used, it creates a problem.

Although extremely uneconomical for wind developers, it is easier to shut down a wind farm than hydro or most other energy supplies. Last year, a staggering total of 25 TWh of wind power had to be curtailed around the country.

BPA said it would be a last resort measure, only after all else fails to soak up the excess, including “bilateral marketing, maintenance deferrals, using available reservoir storage, reducing balancing reserves and lowering output at Columbia Generating Station” (a nuclear power plant).

Oddly, despite an inundation of innovation in storage technologies, BPA makes no mention of any way of storing the excess wind power as an alternative. Do they not read Cleantechnica?

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

25 TWh of Wind Power Idled in 2010 in US – Grid Storage Needed (cleantechnica.com)
Bonneville Power to Wind Generators — Shut Down, and You Get Free Power (nytimes.com)
BPA: $25,000 reward in wire theft from Kent substation (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

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Tags: Bonneville Power Administration

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

http://www.facebook.com/chris.hooymans Chris A Hooymans

It might be time for wind companies to invest in capacitors or compressed air storage to save wind energy for when it can best be used. Or it might just be a case of finding consumers who indicate a preference for wind powered energy.
Pingback: One Way the Smart Grid Will Make Cheaper Heat (+ Wind Storage!) – CleanTechnica: Cleantech innovation news and views
http://www.sustainablebusinessoregon.com/ Christina Williams

I have to point out that Bonneville Power Administration is in Oregon, not Washington. I agree with Roger that it’s a complicated issue. Rachel Shimshak of Renewable Northwest Project recently weighed in on the top on Sustainable Business Oregon: http://www.sustainablebusinessoregon.com/columns/2011/03/powering-down-wind-isnt-the-only.html
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Woops! Fixed. Thanks. Yes, it is. But the solution is storage.
Roger Lauricella

Susan: This issue is not a simple one. First of all BPA has a requirement to ensure that the grid is stable and that they can supply and respond to demand and faults and problems. They have to utilize base load facilities (such as hydro) that can provide both voltage and frequency stabilization as the means to do this so a base load facility will always receive priority and will not be curtailed unless enough other baseload generation is available to meet the voltage and frequency backups that are needed for the overall grid. Wind unfortunately at this time can not provide voltage or frequency support needed for grid stabilization. Wind also in its current form (and certainly in the NW) is not a self starting power source. You need the grid first for wind to work (i.e voltage is needed to start the wind and when it blows high enough current is reversed and wind generates power fed back into the grid). Hydro facilities on the other hand can be black started as they say and can self generate (its by virtue of use a different type of generator). There are also other issues associated with where the wind power is sold vs where the hydro power is sold that sort of get in the way of coordination. Quite a bit of wind power in one state is now wheeled through that state to other states (see examples of California Wind Power coming from surrounding states) whereas in BPAs case, almost all the hydro power is utilized in its territory. For example if BPA curtails their hydro (which may feed their customers) and allows wind to flow through (to possibly a customer who is not in BPAs territory) they are not meeting the requirements of their contracts to their customers. A very delicate balancing act. Iberdrola is a bit biased, they want to sell their power to their end use customers and they will of course step up and say not fair. As to your comment on storage, you are right on, but that is really the responsibility of the wind farm owner if he wants to have his wind power play in that arena. BPA of course could install storage for wind power but they would have to get approval for repayment and addition into the rate base and then if the wind power from that area was not being sold into their area, what do they do.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Good point.
Anonymous

So, they’re going to ask free market loving Republicans to push this legislation through for them?

Strangely I find this good news. It says to me that someone is going to see this as an opportunity to build some storage and make some money.

Or they could simply hook up to the Pacific Intertie and ship that power south and let some natural gas turbines take a rest.
Anonymous

This is where the smart grid and electric cars come in.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Yes.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  And even send (Better Place) batteries up there for charging at night?