Below was a great summary (if a bit simplified in parts) comment from one of our readers on one of our posts last week. I thought it deserved a few more eyes. Also, I happened to go back to a roundtable discussion of utility CEOs today that supports the overall … [continued]
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is adding to its already impressive list of renewable energy innovations with a new two-year plan to develop custom forecasting systems for wind and solar generation.
NCAR scientists and engineers will develop technology to predict sudden changes in wind speed, enable wind farm operators to curtail turbines before potentially damaging icy conditions, and predict the amount of energy generated by small-scale solar panel installations.
Intermittency may be the Achilles Heel of solar energy. Since the Sun doesn’t always shine and utility-scale energy storage isn’t available yet, grid operators have to rely on dispatchable generation like natural gas or when clouds cover up solar farms. But that may be about to change in a big way…
Following up on a great guest post by Chris Varrone on wind intermittency and why it’s not a big deal, apparently the International Energy Agency (IEA) now has a new book out, Harnessing Variable Renewables: a Guide to the Balancing Challenge, that tells us the same thing that Chris was explaining.
