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At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

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Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#21

Post by barredo »

narag wrote: post #16

I can't see it from the article: are they talking about total generated energy or consumed ? In Spain our government has banned new nuclear plants, so we have to buy electricity from France, that produces it using nuclear plants anyway. The high percentages of wind power is no wonder. There are a lot of generators installed.

> so we have to buy electricity from France

Lie.

  Year	Electricity - imports (million kWh)
  2000	9000
  2001	11945
  2002	12166
  2003	7588
  2004	7588
  2005	9800
  2006	8700
  2007	8300
  2008	8773
  2009	8773

  Year	Electricity - exports (million kWh)
  2000	5600
  2001	6230
  2002	7832
  2003	4138
  2004	4138
  2005	4400
  2006	7500
  2007	11400
  2008	14520
  2009	14520
Source: Cia Factbook.

More: http://twitpic.com/5zscj/full And more: http://twitpic.com/5zxm3/full 2nd chart show how much % of Portuguese electricity is imported from Spain

Source: Red Electrica Española (Spanish grid operator)

France exports electricity to other countries such as Belgium and such (70k kWh last year)

Last link shows consuption, production, imports and exports of electricty in Spain: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=79&v=81&v=82&#3...

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#22

Post by samuel »

barredo wrote: post #21
narag wrote: post #16

I can't see it from the article: are they talking about total generated energy or consumed ? In Spain our government has banned new nuclear plants, so we have to buy electricity from France, that produces it using nuclear plants anyway. The high percentages of wind power is no wonder. There are a lot of generators installed.

> so we have to buy electricity from France Lie. Year Electricity - imports (million kWh) 2000 9000 2001 11945 2002 12166 2003 7588 2004 7588 2005 9800 2006 8700 2007 8300 2008 8773 2009 8773 Year Electricity - exports (million kWh) 2000 5600 2001 6230 2002 7832 2003 4138 2004 4138 2005 4400 2006 7500 2007 11400 2008 14520 2009 14520 Source: Cia Factbook. More: http://twitpic.com/5zscj/full And more: http://twitpic.c…

Thank you for your eye-widening comment. It's surprising how we swallow "well known facts" as this (everybody pretends to know that we import energy from french nuclears), without any research.

The comment you answer wasn't mine, but it could have been. Thanks.

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#24

Post by sketerpot »

kilps wrote: post #14

For everyone who keeps saying that this is only at peak, that doesn't mean that it isn't important. If you can generate that much wind, then store the energy with pumped storage - you are still getting far more overall renewable energy than you would have otherwise.

Assuming perfect energy storage, the number you want is the average power production. You get this by multiplying the maximum output by the capacity factor, which is 21-23% in Spain.

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#25

Post by uvdiv »

pieter wrote: post #8

I think this blogpost debunks this pretty good: http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2009/11/spanish-wind-power-exposed... Spain only gets about 9% of energy from renewables on average, which is much less than a lot of other countries. The 53% number is very deceptive IMHO, and really shows that you can't count on wind for reliable energy.

Oh wow. I was just lurking here, and I see my own blog mentioned!

I hate to be an exasperating pedant, but I am, and I must annoy you:

"Spain only gets about 9% of energy from renewables on average,"

It's actually 9% of electricity from wind power, which is a very different statistic. As other commenters point out here, actually ~25% of Spanish electricity is renewable [1]; most of the difference is hydropower, which is also renewable. And then the proportion of energy is different yet, since most energy consumption is in forms that are not electric: i.e. natural gas heating, petrol fuel. See example energy flowcharts here [2].

[1] (PDF file) http://www.ree.es/ingles/sistema_electrico/pdf/infosis/sinte...

[2] https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/energy.html

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#26

Post by uvdiv »

adrinavarro wrote: post #20
pieter wrote: post #8

I think this blogpost debunks this pretty good: http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2009/11/spanish-wind-power-exposed... Spain only gets about 9% of energy from renewables on average, which is much less than a lot of other countries. The 53% number is very deceptive IMHO, and really shows that you can't count on wind for reliable energy.

9% is the lowest value, not the average!

Oh no, it is the average value. You don't want to know the lowest value. Or if you do, go to the Spanish utility's site and browse statistics for the summer months, when wind is usually slower:

http://www.ree.es/ingles/operacion/curvas_eolica.asp

E.g. July 1st 2009 - minimum of 105 MWe, or about 0.3% of average demand. The recent peak was 11,500 MWe:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/spain-nati...

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#27

Post by adrinavarro »

uvdiv wrote: post #26
adrinavarro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9% is the lowest value, not the average!

Oh no, it is the average value. You don't want to know the lowest value. Or if you do, go to the Spanish utility's site and browse statistics for the summer months, when wind is usually slower: http://www.ree.es/ingles/operacion/curvas_eolica.asp E.g. July 1st 2009 - minimum of 105 MWe, or about 0.3% of average demand. The recent peak was 11,500 MWe: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/spain-nati...

You're right. Anyway, and what I mean, is that the average of energy provided with enough wind is pretty high. The average isn't that low for the 95th percentile (and the bottleneck is still the wind)

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#28

Post by narag »

barredo wrote: post #21
narag wrote: post #16

I can't see it from the article: are they talking about total generated energy or consumed ? In Spain our government has banned new nuclear plants, so we have to buy electricity from France, that produces it using nuclear plants anyway. The high percentages of wind power is no wonder. There are a lot of generators installed.

> so we have to buy electricity from France Lie. Year Electricity - imports (million kWh) 2000 9000 2001 11945 2002 12166 2003 7588 2004 7588 2005 9800 2006 8700 2007 8300 2008 8773 2009 8773 Year Electricity - exports (million kWh) 2000 5600 2001 6230 2002 7832 2003 4138 2004 4138 2005 4400 2006 7500 2007 11400 2008 14520 2009 14520 Source: Cia Factbook. More: http://twitpic.com/5zscj/full And more: http://twitpic.c…

Interesting, I admit to have repeated what I've heard so many times without checking it.

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#29

Post by lallysingh »

chrisb wrote: post #3

Impressive. But the headline is slightly deceptive, as 53% is the maximum ever recorded. What's more impressive is the that over the 24 hours presented the contribution from wind never drops beneath 30%. Contrast this with the current UK renewables target of 15% by 2020 ( http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/e... )

Hmm, I don't know if I'm so jaded by bs news attention grabbing at this point or what, but I assumed that it hitting 53% was the news story, hence it being an event (and implicitly, a peak), not a steady-state average.

Re: At peak, Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind

#30

Post by TomRaftery »

pieter wrote: post #11
ghshephard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not debunking at all, the first words in the article were: "Ok, not all the time, but last weekend at 5:50am on Sunday morning (8th Nov) Spain set a new record, hitting 53.7%" Which instantly made it clear that this was an exception. I don't think anybody is suggesting that you can provide all of your power requirements from Wind, but - clearly, Wind can be an important part of your renewable portfolio in some cases.…

The title of this post was edited after I posted, it was something like "Spain gets 53% of its energy from wind" first.

As the author of the article I can categorically refute this.

The title of this article was never edited.

And WordPress has obligingly saved all of the post revisions so I can quite easily prove this, if necessary.

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