News
Wind power throws a curve at the BPA
Wind-powered generators dominate the landscape along the eastern Oregon reaches of the Columbia River. Managing their intermittent power output has become a major issue for the Bonneville Power Administration. ...By October, the agency intends to establish a system to knock wind farms off its transmission grid when they are operating so far outside their scheduled output that it threatens to exhaust the agency's hydro reserves.
July 21, 2009
by Ted Sickinger
in The Oregonian
Utility wonks have been quipping for years that the future of energy in the Northwest is windy and gassy.
When it comes to wind power, the future has already arrived, a reality that has come rushing home in the past two years and created major friction among the Bonneville Power Administration, wind power producers and the agency's utility customers.
The BPA, which markets the energy produced at 31 hydroelectric dams and a nuclear plant in the Columbia River Basin, has seen the amount of wind power flowing onto its grid nearly double in each of the past four years.
That surge... [continue via Web link]
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