This again points out that If the GRID is not ready Wind does not work. I did not make my usual road trip this year but I talked to many who did i asked if many of the wind generators were still idle? T in US north Midwest? They said they were. These wind farms are always semi-idle. The main reason is there was suppose to be a high voltage DC transmission lines to many of the large cities around the western Great Lakes. They started building these when people saw how big and high the towers were the 'not in my back yard' took over and construction was stopped. Transmisson lines are major problems. In US. One of the reasons is that any line breakage has to be detected and power removed, before line hits the ground. As voltage and current goes up this becomes expensive and hard to do. By making the towers 200 ~ 300 FT tall this becomes easier but towers are big and ugly.
This will become a road block for EVs as well. NH has a very low penetration of EVs registered. Unfortunately it is a major tourist area for the rich from the east coast of New England and New York. Many of which were early buyers of EVs First sign of problems was Memorial Day weekend 3 years ago. about 12PM much of the north end of lake lost power. All the people arriving at lake Plugged in their EVs though no local power limits were exceeded three major substations could not handle total load they all went off line in about 60 minutes of each other.
Another problem showed up in NH. there are two major Rest areas on I 93, one north one south, They have many gas pumps and a retail area that is as big as a small mall with food, stores and bathrooms. They added many charging stations to the parking lot 3 or 4 years ago. Everything was fine till about two years ago when they upgraded many of the charges to very high speed chargers. About 8 PM on Friday the Northbound mall went dark. The main power breaker tripped. It had automatic reset so about a minute later lights came back on then about 2 ~ 4 minutes later dark again. This continued till power company people arrived. They quickly realized. problem was draw from chargers. and shut them down so gas pumps and stores still had power. The short term solution was to put out of order signs on half the chargers and shut them off. Mid term was to install monitoring equipment that as draw becomes high the charge rate of the chargers is reduced automatically. A friend of mine whose home is on cape cod says he always stopped here for a quick rest & food. On Friday night this 20 minute stop usually charged his high end Tesla from 20 % to 70~80% Now the same stop on Friday evening only charges to about 40~ 50% For him solution was easy come up Friday AM and go home Monday AM. They are expecting to be done fixing this shortly. there is a substation about 15 miles away that has the capacity to double the power available for the rest areas. It will take about 2 years to upgrade the grid to support this draw. biggest delay is the permitting process.
We do not have a grid that can make the changes necessary to support Large deployment of Clean generation and EVs. Usually this would only take time and money. Unfortunately, the 'not in my back yard' attitude adds substantially to Time and cost.
A quick google search shows up these costs to install a MWH of capacity
Combined cycle NG US$ 37.11 MWH
Solar. $47,67
Hydro $ 55,25
Bio mass $90.00
Batteries $120.00 Batteries do not generate power but they do smooth uneven generation and use so their cost has to be added to generation cost. they also need periodic replacing.
Offshore wind. $120.00
Any one who thinks this is simple and fast needs to understand what is involved better.
Here is a quick simple explanation of why it is so hard to add transmission capacity to the Grid in US Google the subject for many more articles.
- https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/why-its-so-hard-to-build-new-electrical-transmission-lines-in-the-us.html
- https://www.gatesnotes.com/Transmission
(20min delay)