Editor's Note Presented on October 20th during the 2006 Electric Market Forecasting Conference sponsored by EPIS, Inc. this addresses, in part, the issue of whether emissions are reduced with the addition of industrial wind energy. This is a large pdf file (8.55MB) and is available via the weblink below.

Link to EPIS Conference Site:

http://www.epis.com/Events/Conference/Archives/2006/Default.htm

Selected Extracts:

How Does Wind Produce Emissions?

. The Overlooked Environmental Cost of a Wind Generation Portfolio to Serve the Need for Power – draft paper by Lincoln Wolverton
. Premise of the paper
– In a closed system, wind generation may not change the amount of fossil fuel burned
– In an open system, the addition of wind generation will change the system operations from base load plants to cycling plants

Testing the Premise with AURORA

. First, test the closed system premise
– Use AURORA’s closed system dispatch feature to examine two portfolios
. One portfolio has a 100 MW wind generator and a 100 MW single cycle combustion turbine
– Heat rate = 9500
. Other portfolio has a 100 MW combined cycle combustion turbine
– Heat rate = 7300

Testing the Premise with AURORA

. Results:
– Fossil fuel usage increases from wind case to CCCT case by 6.6%
– GHG production increases by 8.8%
– NOx production decreases by 73%
– SO2 production decreases by 33%

Testing the Premise with AURORA

. Next, test the open system premise
– Examine two cases
. First, compare the future system with wind generation present
. Second, replace the future system wind with an equivalent amount of energy production from combined cycle combustion turbines
. 14,000 MW of wind producing 4,135 aMW of energy replaced with combustion turbines in each area with wind plants

Testing the Premise with AURORA

. Results:
– Fossil fuel usage increases from wind case to CCCT case by 5.7% across all of WECC
– GHG production increases by 4.0%
. 18.7% increase in CCCT GHG offset by peaker reductions
– NOx production increases by 0.8%
. 18.2% increase in CCCT NOx offset by peaker reductions
– SO2 production increases by 0.1%
. 19.5% increase in CCCT SO2 offset by peaker reductions

Testing the Premise with AURORA

. Conclusions:
– Wind generation in the WECC is now of such size that hourly modeling is an important factor in predicting market clearing prices
– Geographic concentration of wind generation is more expensive to MCPs than diverse locations
– Emissions savings from wind generation are minimized if SCCT operation increases to regulate wind output to meet load

Web link: http://www.epis.com/Support/Downloads/2006_Confere...