WMOD00522

• Title: Projected Impacts of a Very Large Windpower Complex
• Date: 9/26/1978
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

The most cost-effective way of using wind as a source of electric utility
power appears to be by harvesting windpower at large windfarms situatE~d in
especially windy places, transmitting it if necessary over long distances to
load centers, and using large-scale energy storage to match fluctuations in
power generation to fluctuations of load! The largest natural resources
of wind energy that have been identified in North America lie along its
coasts (especially the arctic coast), in the south-central Great Plains, and
in places where ridges and gaps in the mounteJLtn ranges locally concentrate
the winds, By far the largest opportunity for hydrostorage of energy is
represented by the juxtaposition of Lake Erie arid Lake Ontario as uppe~r and
lower reservoirs of a pumped-storage hydroele,ctric complex. For the p'-urpose
of this presentation, the combination of large windfarms dispersed along the
northeastern coasts of North America and over the Laurentian and Appalachian
highlands with a pumped-hydroelectric plant near Niagara, and transmission
lines linking these elements with major load centers of the Boston/Washington
and Chicago /Pi t tsburgh megalopolises, has been, taken as the imag1e of
large-scale use of the windpower technology n.ow approaching commercialization.

The treatment employed is that of a thought-experiment, an effort toward
rational exploration of this particular "what if." The focus is not on the
engineering means or feasibility of building the projected compl1ex, si.nce
these are subject to change, but on the effects of eventually eX1ercisi.ng
this option.

B. THE PROPOSITION

1. The Tripod Concept of Windpower Application to Electric Utilities

A windfarm harvests solar energy from the atmosphere only while the.
wind is blowing, and then not always at its peak capacity. Even when several
widely dispersed windfarms are interconnected, there will be timlas when the
combination of them produces much more power than average and tDnes ,~hen it
produces much less. Demands for electric utility power also fluctuate,
reaching peaks when exceptional loads are imposed on the system and dropping
to low levels when most people are asleep and most factories are closed.
Energy storage is being increasingly used to draw power from the lowest-cost
generating units during periods of low demand and return it to the power lines
at times of peak demand. This is a cost,-effective alternative to providing
enough primary generating capacity to melet the highes t peak load. . Pumped-stor-
age hydroelectric plants are the leading method of energy storage, with about
10 GW of ,installed ca:pa.city and sites identified suitable for expansion of 2
this capacity to more than 340 GW in the southwestern United States alone

The best windfarm sites are generally remote from the gneat "electric
load centers, and the best sites for pumped-storage hydroelectric plants may
be remote from both. Linking of the three elements by transmission lines is
therefore necessary for completion of an operational energy system. The
capacity of the transmission lines must be sufficient to deliver peak power
from the windfarms to the load centers or to storage, as the circumstances ,
of the moment may require, or to serve peak load demands from energy storage.

These three elements, then -- a dispersed array of windfarms, an
energy-storage facility, and transmission lines between these and to load