“Now that Deepwater Wind is close to starting operation, ratepayers can compare its 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour versus their latest power bill showing an energy cost of 8.7 cents per kilowatt hour – a 15.7 cent difference…. So why is Rhode Island building this project?“

The wind turbines offshore Block Island, Rhode Island, the Deepwater Wind project, are rising faster than expected due to favorable weather and wind conditions. In fact, the last blade was installed on the fifth wind turbine two weeks ago.

The U.S. renewable energy business will soon enter a new era when these turbines generate electricity. Many people may wonder why it has taken the U.S. so long to start an offshore wind industry, given the perceived success of projects in Western European countries. But cost matters, and the cost of offshore wind defines a new high for US ratepayers.…

“Michael Goggin says that attacking the validity of the CEMS data is a sure sign of desperation. But it can be argued that any possible desperation is on the other side.”

In my 2014 post Where Wind Studies Go Wrong: Cullen in AEJ (Part II) , Michael Goggin of the Amercian Wind Energy Association (AWEA) made a comment that recently came to my attention, which deserves a rebuttal despite the lapse of time. My 2014 post critiqued a paper by Joseph Cullen, Measuring the Environmental Benefits of Wind-Generated Electricity.

In summary, Goggin’s points were as follows:

• I said EPA’s Continuous Emissions Measurement System (CEMS) measurement was on an hourly basis and thus understated the real cycling-related emissions from wind power as a result. (Goggin says CEMS takes emissions measurements every 15 minutes and reports hourly based on averaging these results.)

“The best approach to understanding wind’s impact appears to be that properly structured ‘bench’ tests should be performed, and results made publically available, on actual fossil fuel plants under the full range of conditions experienced in balancing the effect of the presence of wind’s generation behavior.”

Part I on Tuesday and Part II yesterday focussed on the greater range of variations and the increased ramping levels caused by wind in short time intervals of a few minutes or less, and introduced some of the complexities involved in analysis of the impact of wind in an electricity system.

This post looks at the analysis of published fossil fuel consumption and emissions information and addresses two major issues:

(1) the questionable nature of the published information, and

(2) the questionable attempts by external analysts (those outside the information publisher organizations) using this information to determine the cause and effect relationship between wind production and fossil fuel consumption and emissions leading to the determination of savings with wind.…

“Understanding the impact of wind requires very detailed analysis of ramping events on a short term basis. The analysis provided here raises even more questions, so there is still much to be learned to properly quantify any impact from the presence of wind on fossil fuel or emissions savings. Arguably the complexity involved defies analysis.”

“Wind increases the magnitude of the balancing activity by increasing the ramping over load alone with a notable number of large ‘outliers’. The dynamic impact of this can substantially increase the rate of fossil fuel consumption and emissions in fossil fuel plants in the net load balancing role over that claimed by any less rigorous analysis.”

Part I yesterday in this three-part series examined wind intermittency/integration basics. Part II today focuses on the ramping impacts of the combination of load and wind (net load).…