Robert Hornung/John Constable
National Post
March 6, 2007

Tom Adams‘s oped on wind power (Blown Over, Feb. 22) tries to argue that wind energy raises the spectre of unexpected blackout risks, high costs, and unreliable production. Real world experience with wind energy does not support this view.

Wind energy is now the fastest growing source of electricity in the world and is widely recognized as a critical component of any strategy to address climate change and air pollution. In the year 2006 alone, global wind energy capacity grew by 32% – representing a global investment of US$23-billion – and as a result wind energy now provides enough energy worldwide to meet the annual electricity consumption of 22.5 million homes.

Mr. Adams’ piece also leaves out some important facts that must be brought to light. First, he references a November, 2006, blackout in Europe as "evidence" for the risks associated with wind energy, but, as he himself notes, the cause of the blackout was completely unrelated to wind energy production.

Second, Mr. Adams argues that integrating wind energy into the grid requires costly new investments in transmission infrastructure and interconnections. What he does not say is that many jurisdictions require such investments anyway to meet rising electricity demand and the need to connect any form of new electricity generation to the grid.

Third, Mr. Adams argues that wind energy production in Canada is unreliable, although the overwhelming majority of studies and experience worldwide indicate that wind energy can be reliably integrated into the electricity grid at much higher penetrations than is the case in Canada today, at low cost and in ways that enhance grid stability. The wind energy industry is now working with electricity system operators across Canada to design policies that maximize potential wind energy integration (and its environmental and economic benefits) while maintaining or improving system reliability.

Fourth, Mr. Adams notes that some of Canada’s wind farms have not met expected production levels, but fails to point out that such projected production levels are 10-year averages and many Canadian wind farms have only been in operation for one to three years.

Canada’s installed wind energy capacity more than doubled in 2006 and provincial governments and utilities have adopted targets that would see wind energy production in Canada increase by a minimum 700% in the next decade. This will allow Canada to finally start capitalizing on its massive wind-energy potential and move to begin to catch up to the world’s leading producers and users of this clean and renewable energy resource.

Robert Hornung is president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association.

Hard to run a reliable grid

by John Constable, National Post, March 6, 2007

Robert Hornung of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, a trade lobby, takes issue with Tom Adams’ thoughtful and very well-informed article on various problems now emerging in relation to European wind power. A few further comments may assist those interested in this complex topic to come to a reasoned conclusion.

Mr. Adams rightly refers to the strongly negative contribution made by wind energy during attempts to re-establish the European grid after the Nov 4 disturbance. Mr Hornung seems to grant this, but insists that wind had no role in causing the problem in the first place. In a narrow technical sense this is true, since the disturbance was caused by human error.

However, the grid area affected, the E.ON Netz control zone, has for some years now been pointing out that a very large wind fleet in its system has rendered it much more difficult to operate a reliable grid (see its wind reports on www.eon-netz.com).

Careful study of the UCTE report leads to the conclusion that large quantities of uncontrollable generation leads to fragile systems. Mitigating this is a considerable economic and technical challenge.

The cost of grid expansion to accommodate wind energy is also correctly remarked upon by Mr. Adams. This is very obvious at present in the United Kingdom, where expected wind growth in Scotland is driving a proposed 130-mile grid expansion project between Beauly and Denny. Similar grid expansion projects are well known elsewhere.

By 2020, E.ON Netz estimates that, because of growth in wind energy, Germany as a whole will require 2,700 kilometres of new or reinforced grid, of which 1,900 km will need to be on new routes, at a cost of $3-billion ($4.6-billion). These are major costs to the consumer, and Mr. Hornung’s failure to take them seriously is somewhat disappointing.

Mr. Adams remarks on problems with wind variability, and Mr. Hornung responds that there is no real difficulty. However, empirical data from Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and other locations, shows conclusively that managing wind variability is neither straightforward nor cheap.

It helps no one, certainly not the renewable sector, to pretend otherwise. Real world experience and complex meteorological models such as that commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation (www.ref.org.uk)suggest that there is a capacity limit for wind on a network, and very careful planning is required to ensure that this limit is not exceeded, and that the viable wind fleet is integrated without unreasonable risk or expense.

In the United Kingdom, we believe that wind will play its part offshore, where high wind resources can be found closer to centres of load, and geographically distributed to achieve some, modest, degree of smoothing.

In conclusion, while wind will have an important role in the global energy portfolio, we need realism with regard to the scale and value of this contribution, not least because over-expenditure in one area will entail a serious opportunity cost, suppressing other low-carbon technologies with higher intrinsic merits, such as tidal systems, biomass, and conventional fossil fuel systems equipped with carbon capture and sequestration.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Without a balanced approach, it is very unlikely that countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom can hope to offer the economically compelling example that alone will persuade China and India to do likewise, and without such joint action our climate-change policies will be little more than futile gestures.

John Constable is policy and research director for the Renewable Energy Foundation, London.