Firmer When Further Flung
~ As many have long suspected, variable renewable energy sources, like wind, can be made more firm through numbers. Adding enough wind turbines and spreading them geographically
smooths out the variability of individual wind turbines.
The impact is significant, and the optimized system varies from 15 to 50 percent of capacity, compared to individual turbine variability that's twice as large. Over a longer period (a year), the optimized (combined) system provides significantly more reliable power to the electric grid. It reduces periods of zero output to a few hours per year, effectively zero probability.
Still, it always comes back to the grid. If we cannot reallocate distributed generation from where it is available to where the load is, none of this matters. A better grid is what will truly unlock the promise of renewable energy.
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