BIG WIND TO BE STORED, USED ON DEMAND IN TEXAS

There is so much innovation going on in the world of renewable energy right now that it sometimes makes your head spin! NewEnergyNews suspects it will be hard to make compressed air storage of wind energy efficient, but if it can be done, the can-doers in the wind energy industry can do it.

TXU, Shell plan Panhandle wind farm
Jim Fuquay, July 27, 2007 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

WHO
TXU Corp. subsidiary Luminant, Shell WindEnergy Inc.

Texas has huge wind energy potential -- and its entrepreneurs and developers and taking advantage of it! (click to enlarge)

WHAT
The two energy giant subsidiaries will cooperate to develop a 3000 megawatt wind farm in the Texas Panhandle region. The farm will be among the biggest in the world. It will incorporate an experimental compressed-air technology to store excess, off-peak energy generated by the farm’s turbines.

WHEN
No specific schedule for the planned facility has been announced.

WHERE
- This installation will be in Briscoe County, southeast of Amarillo. Texas billionaire energy entrepreneur Boone Pickens’ Mesa Power is developing a similarly sized (2,000 - 4,000 megawatts) in Roberts, Gray, Hemphill and Wheeler counties of West Texas.


WHY
- The Texas Panhandle has excellent wind resources and a grid which readily integrates wind-generated electricity. Landowners there are among the best paid of all wind power’s lessees.
- Storing the wind energy as compressed air so that it can be released to generate electricity on demand would solve the problem of intermittency that to some extent hampers wind energy’s viability in the marketplace. The basic idea is to use power generated by the turbines during off-peak hours to pump air into geologic or manmade storage containers under pressure and then release the stored energy when there is demand.
- Presently, some Texas wind farms operate at peak capacity only 30% of the time and only 10% of the time on hot summer days when demand for electricity is highest.
- The Texas Public Utilities Commission has announced plans to further develop the electricity in the region to take advantage of the enormous wind energy development.

The basic idea for storing wind energy. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Greg Wortham, director, West Texas Wind Energy Coalition: “The holy grail is to find a way to store wind energy…”