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Ars Technica brings us a tale of renewable energy - Geothermal energy has success in Nevada, wants to spread to the rest of the west.
Geothermal energy advocates are quick to point out that when the Sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, geothermal facilities can be brought online "in under an hour" as one worker explained to me. Coal-fired plants, on the other hand, have long and costly ramp-up times. Doug Hollett, a program director for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Geothermal Technologies Office, told a round table on Tuesday that the ramp-up issue can be seen in California. The state has been a leader in renewable energy, but it will have to deal with intermittency if it wants to incorporate more renewables into the grid.
In addition to Geothermal; this plant also uses Solar-Thermal to help heat the water into the range where they can get the most power from the generators.
- as Renewable energy goes, Geothermal is the one you can depend on for a base load; why is it that we don't see more of this?
(Score: 2) by khallow on Wednesday August 13 2014, @12:19AM
I recall a recent argument where I was arguing with someone over why we obsess over baseload. It's not because baseload is particularly important - he had that part right, but because historically, baseload was the cheapest power available. If you're an electricity generator with numerous power plants at your disposal, you don't run the most expensive power first. Further, you can sometimes, as in the case of historically cheap coal power, optimize the plant so that it is always running at optimal efficiency making the power even cheaper (there's modest synergy between the cost of power and infrastructure, and the baseload role for some power sources).
Now, if wind or solar power becomes vastly cheaper, then these electricity providers will orient their power generation strategy around wind or solar, not around baseload. They won't be asking "How can we incorporate an expensive power generation source into our network so we can have baseload". Instead, they'll be asking "What do we need to do to address the flaws of our cheap power?" They'll go for power smoothing, electricity transmission, and energy storage long before they'll add an expensive baseload option. My view is that a load-following coal plant or some more peaking load natural gas plants may even be greener than the geothermal option for most regions since such infrastructure would allow for more intermittent cheap, relatively green power sources to be deployed. Depends on the tradeoffs of the situation, I suppose.