{"id":40511,"date":"2014-03-10T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=40511"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:11:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:11:00","slug":"worlds-largest-grid-operator-reveals-why-increased-wind-energy-means-increased-savings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/03\/worlds-largest-grid-operator-reveals-why-increased-wind-energy-means-increased-savings\/","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s Largest Grid Operator Reveals Why Increased Wind Energy Means Increased Savings"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fall, PJM, the largest grid operator in the world, serving 60 million customers across 13 Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states, issued the\u00a0preliminary results of a major wind integration study.\u00a0The\u00a0final results<\/a>\u00a0of the study\u00a0were released<\/a>\u00a0Monday [3 Mar 2014]\u00a0and they are\u00a0even better<\/a>\u00a0than the preliminary results.<\/p>\n

Among the highlights:<\/p>\n

Wind energy\u2019s economic savings are even larger than found in the fall\u2019s preliminary results.<\/b><\/p>\n

Obtaining 20 percent of PJM\u2019s electricity from wind energy reduces the cost of producing electricity by about $10 billion annually (about 25 percent of total annual production costs of $40 billion), while 30 percent wind reduces production costs by about $15 billion (about 37.5 percent of total production costs) each year. These numbers are up from the fall\u2019s preliminary results of about $9 billion for the 20 percent wind case and $13 billion for the 30 percent case. Importantly, these benefits were just as large in sensitivity analyses that explored scenarios with lower natural gas prices and electricity demand, while a sensitivity case that added a $40 per ton ton carbon price increased wind\u2019s production savings by roughly 50 percent. Wholesale electricity prices are reduced by about $9 to $22 billion annually across the 20 percent and 30 percent scenarios, with the high offshore scenarios producing the largest wholesale price reductions of $22 billion. This occurs because offshore wind tends to produce more during times of peak electricity demand, offsetting more expensive gas generation.<\/p>\n

PJM\u2019s study found that each Megawatt-hour (MWh) of wind energy provides between $57 and $74 of value to the power system, depending on the scenario. This is a very high value, higher than the $50 per MWh value found for most scenarios in the preliminary results. Transmission costs were also found to be a very low $3 per MWh in almost all cases, accounting for only about 5 percent of the value provided by wind energy. The transmission costs were significantly lower than in the study\u2019s preliminary results. Importantly,\u00a0other studies by independent grid operators<\/a>\u00a0have confirmed that most transmission upgrades more than pay for themselves by providing other benefits, such as improved electric reliability, reduced electricity prices, more competitive electricity markets, and higher efficiency of electricity transmission relative to today\u2019s congested electric grid.<\/p>\n

Wind power\u2019s pollution reductions are also very large.<\/b><\/p>\n

Carbon dioxide emissions declined by 27 to 41 percent in the 30 percent renewable cases, and sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide\u00a0emissions declined by 35 percent in the 30 percent wind case that deployed the best onshore wind resources. Depending on the scenario, the wind cases reduced total PJM coal generation by 22 to 66 percent, with total PJM gas generation declining by 26 to 57 percent. Imports from other regions, primarily coal generation from\u00a0Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), also declined by 20 to 30 percent in almost all cases.<\/p>\n

The study finds there is no harm to electric reliability from increasing wind energy use by a factor of 10 to 20.<\/b><\/p>\n

As before, the study notes that \u201call the simulations of challenging days revealed successful operation of the PJM real-time market.\u201d The final study also notes that the \u201cPJM system, with adequate transmission and ancillary services in the form of Regulation, will not have any significant issue absorbing the higher levels of renewable energy penetration considered in the study.\u201d This confirms the results of dozens of other\u00a0wind integration studies<\/a>\u00a0and independent grid operator\u00a0analyses<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0real-world wind operations data<\/a>. As PJM\u2019s Senior Vice President Andy Ott and other experts explain in this\u00a0video<\/a>, changes in wind energy output are reliably accommodated using the same tools grid operators have always used to accommodate fluctuations in electricity demand as well as abrupt failures at conventional power plants.<\/p>\n

Building on NREL\u2019s\u00a0comprehensive analysis from last fall<\/a>, this study puts further nails in the coffin of the\u00a0fossil fuel industry<\/a> myth\u00a0that wind energy\u2019s emissions savings are less than expected because it causes fossil-fired power plants to cycle more. A key reason is that wind energy\u2019s gradual changes in output are a small contributor to total power system variability, smaller than the variations in electricity demand and the abrupt failures of conventional power plants. For example, today\u2019s study found that increasing PJM wind energy use by seven times by adding 28,000 MW of wind would only increase the need for regulation reserves by 340 MW, or an extremely small increase of about 1.2 MW of reserves for every 100 MW of added wind capacity. For comparison, PJM currently holds 3,350 MW of expensive, fast-acting contingency reserves 24\/7 to ensure that it can keep the lights on in case a large fossil or nuclear power plant unexpectedly breaks down. In other words, the total reserve need and integration cost for accommodating large fossil and nuclear power plants (3,350 MW) is about 10 times larger than the incremental reserve need associated with increasing PJM wind use by 7-fold (340 MW). As further testament to the fact that wind energy is a small contributor to total power system variability, PJM\u2019s study found that the total cost of cycling all power plants dropped from $870 million in the base scenario to $500 million in the scenario with 30 percent wind energy (page 33 in the\u00a0executive summary<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The study found that cycling\u2019s impact on smog-forming SO2\u00a0and NOx emissions was in the single digit percents across all scenarios, i.e. wind produced more than 90 percent of the expected emissions reductions for these pollutants. As explained above, carbon dioxide emissions declined by 27-41 percent in the 30 percent renewable cases, consistent with NREL\u2019s finding that the impact of wind-related cycling on CO2\u00a0emissions is \u201cnegligible.\u201d Specifically, NREL\u2019s analysis found that cycling reduced wind\u2019s carbon dioxide savings by 2.4 pounds per MWh, or 0.2 percent out of wind\u2019s total emissions savings of 1190 pounds per MWh, so wind produced 99.8 percent of the expected carbon emissions reductions. It should also be noted that the PJM study likely greatly overstates the impact of cycling due to a peculiarity in its modeling approach. As the study notes, \u201cFor scenarios that experience increased cycling, the results are dominated by supercritical coal emissions.\u201d Experts at NREL and elsewhere have noted that the study likely erred in its assumption that supercritical coal plants would cycle this much, as in the real world it is likely that their output would remain constant while other generators would provide that flexibility. As a result, the already negligible impact on cycling emissions found in the study likely overstates the real-world impact.<\/p>\n

PJM\u2019s study further reinforces other studies that have found wind energy is a win-win-win for consumers, the environment, and electric reliability.<\/b><\/p>\n

For example, a\u00a0May 2013 analysis<\/a>\u00a0by Synapse Energy Economics found that doubling the use of wind energy beyond existing standards in PJM would reduce carbon pollution by 50 million tons per year and maintain reliability while saving consumers $6.9 billion per year on net, after accounting for all wind and transmission costs. In\u00a0numerous<\/a>\u00a0cold\u00a0snaps<\/a>\u00a0over the last two months, including\u00a0several in PJM<\/a>, wind energy has proved its reliability and value by providing large amounts of valuable energy when grid operators needed it most, protecting consumers by keeping electricity and natural gas price spikes in check.<\/p>\n

This study confirms that wind energy is providing that benefit every day by diversifying our energy mix and keeping consumers\u2019 energy costs low.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ecowatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The largest grid operator in the world, serving 60 million customers, issued the final results of a major wind integration study on Monday [3 Mar 2014] and they are even better than the preliminary results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}