North Dakota has wind resources of 4.32 exajoules.

[NNadir]

It is number one in the nation in wind resources. (The unit they use is billion kilowatt-hours, a whopping 1,210 of them, I have converted them in exajoules.)

http://www.awea.org/projects/northdakota.html

From the link, we can calculate the average capacity loading of North Dakota wind farms. The North Dakota wind people also express their potential capacity in Megawatts, (MW), a unit of power and not energy. They say they could install 138,400 Megawatts of such capacity. This translates to 4.37 exajoules. Therefore we can conclude that in North Dakota (one of the few states I've never visited) the wind blows 98.9% of the time.

This is great news.

For some reason this potential Texas of wind has only installed about 100 MW of this 138,000 MW of capacity, and plans another 50 MW.

I'm surprised the place hasn't been over run with wind wildcatters.

For comparison purposes, the US energy demand is a little over 100 exajoules.

[Bill McBlueState]

1. shouldn't everything be in units of power, not energy?

I'm no expert, but I think the usefulness of an energy source has to be "per unit time" -- the US energy demand is 100 exajoules in what period of time?

[phantom power]

3. it's 100 exajoules per year. As far as energy versus power goes...

it depends on what you are trying to compare. Time scale matters. For instance, 100 exajoules per year is a measure of power, but it is more useful for comparing certain things than joules/second. A solar panel may produce 100 watts at noon, but none at midnight. So, comparing energy sources like solar, wind, coal, nuclear, etc, is better done on a scale of a year, to even out fluctuations of seasonal weather, day versus night, etc.

That's why you see several of us talking about "exajoules per year" a lot.

And in some cases, just plain energy is the best measure. How many total exajoules will a given nuclear plant produce, over it's operational lifetime? If you know that, you can talk about comparing things like "deaths per exajoule produced." Or "total cost per exajoule." Or other kinds of cost, environmental or social, etc.

[NNadir]

5. No. The useful unit is energy, not power.

100 exajoules is the rough annual figure. Actually a more accurate number (for 2003) can be found here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1.xls. To convert Quads (10¹⁵ BTU) to exajoules, multiply by 1.055. Thus we see that in 2003 the United States consumed about 104 exajoules of energy. More than 30% of that was imported.

Many people confuse power and energy, and use it as a source of mystification. There is a big difference between 1000 MWe of wind capacity that operates 30% of the time, and a 1000MWe coal plant that operates 100% of the time. The amount of energy the two plants produce differs by a factor of more than 3.

[glitch]

2. Now that's a post I can completely support! nt

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. ACK !! - Time to invade North Dakota then, right?

.
.
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Many do not realize it, that Iraq was not about the oil itself.

It was about getting bases between Israel and Russia/China, and the impending collapse of the American dollar if Saddam had succeeded in trading oil for Euros.

Anyone notice that the USA's bases are proceeding at an unprecedented rate, while hospitals, schools, water and sewage facilities are worse than when Saddam was in power?

USA Admin won't go the wind-power or any other route - USA citizens have to be convinced they need OIL, and that justifies killing people half way across the globe to secure it.

That's them PNACers for ya -

So one thing they got right, them PNACers

"Project for a New American Century"

It's "new" alright"

but one the rest of the globe will remember forever with disgust and hatred

[NNadir]

6. Uh. Oh. I guess we're going to flatten North Dakota then.

Can we do that? Make it flatter I mean...

[Dead_Parrot]

8. How flat is ND?

I merely ask because the last few weeks worth of met data don't seem to show huge wind potential. I'm hoping the towns I looked at are in sheltered places...

[NNadir]

9. Very flat.

I wrote earlier that I have not been to North Dakota, but it is actually South Dakota that I have not visited. Neither I think is a particularly memorable place.

I drove the length of North Dakota once. It is as flat as a pool table in places.

The movie Fargo captures something of the geography.

Western North Dakota was featured in this weekend's New York Times Magazine, because it is being depopulated. It is one of the few states with a decreasing population. There really isn't enough water to farm it productively.

It is fairly windy in general.

http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/othrdata/climate/wind.htm

The wind energy is there, but I can't imagine that there is really an economically compelling way to ship it anywhere. One does, from time to time, hear fantastic claims about its potential. Actually 4 exajoules and change is less than I would have thought.

If the reversible fuel cells I sometimes write about here actually became commercial, it would be possible to imagine this as a practical resource, but now it's mostly a curiousity.

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Ahh, Fargo...

Now I know what it looks like. I spend more time watching the crystal bucket than studying maps, evidently... :)

"You people. If there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it?"

Edit: looks like I just picked the worong places, ND's actually quite varied in wind resources: There's a map here for anyone interested...

As for what to do with the power - Minneapolis is probably within reach, or you could even sell it Winnipeg - Which would work quite well since they have hydro as a back-up... :D

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

7. It has this wind power potential, but

the state (like many others) is transmission constrained. Until and unless we start to address our aging transmission infrastructure there will only be limited growth of wind power in North Dakota. If a project is large enough, a wind developer will run cable to the nearest trans. interconect - but there are financial limits on how far they're willing to go.

Here in Virginia, people are all up in arms re. a proposed 38 MW wind project in Highland County. Their concern is that if allowed - it will open the door to developers building turbines on every ridgetop. Well guess what - there's a single 69 KV line coming into the countyy with just enough excess capacity to accomodate the proposed 38 MW project. Unless the transmission capacity is upgraded - there can't be an additional generation on this line.

[JohnWxy]

11. Good post! I think the reason the Dakotas haven't been developed

as much as Texas is Texas is one state - with the resource and the consumers who need the power. The Dakotas will need to send the power out of state and that requires (probably) either enhancing power transmission lines (or maybe putting in new ones) into other states. This would require some coordination with these other states - who won't be enjoying the revenues (except on the retail level) earned by the wind farms. Of course putting in new transmission lines would be a significant investment(affecting cost per kWh), but with three or four states involved, it would be spread out over a significant population. But this is the reason we need more involvement (or ANY involvement) in wind power development on a national level. Not only to facilitate financing solutions but also to effect regulation changes that control how wind farms are linked into the power grid. In this case, again, which would have to involve more than one state the task gets much more complicated.

The Dokatas could provide power to Madison, WI, St. Paul Minn., Chicago. GEtting all these states and their respective governing boards (governing utililities) is no small undertaking. I'm sure Dokatans would LOVE to set up Wind Farms, but they interest from and cooperation of other states.

Here is a link to a list of the top twenty states in terms of wind power potential:



This link is to a map of the U.S. showing wind potentials for the entire U.S.

http://www.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html


(The Aleutian Islands have fantastic winds(8.8 mps!). The only problem is getting that all that power to somebody who can use it!. Those would be some very long lines, and under water much of the way. Most likely, very impractical.)

[hatrack]

12. Can't address this as a scientist, but what about transmission losses?

Not that this would make it a bad idea . . .

I'd assume there's a rule of thumb for expressing this as a % of total generation.

[phantom power]

13. The percentage loss grows with distance....

I'm sure that somewhere out on the Mighty Web, there's a rough formula for transmission loss as a function of distance. It will depend on the line voltage, and what type of line. Probably a handful of standards are in wide use.

The last figure I read was that we currently lose (on average) 25%. Building redundant power sources and shipping it all over the country would be a significant increase in loss. Which is why I like to harp on local storage solutions, which aren't in wide use and not proven on the terawatt-hour scale necessary for wide-spread use of things like wind power and solar power.

[NNadir]

14. A number of factors enter into transmission losses.

These include temperature, line load (which effect line resistance), materials of construction, and even the breakdown voltage of air (which is a function of humidity and causes losses to sparking and corona discharge) and transformer efficiency.

In general, one seeks to transport power at high voltage, since this lowers resistance losses, but this voltage change is offset by other factors.

Some people act as if North Dakota's wind and wind from places like North Dakota, could save the United States, but essentially all of the electrical energy there is useless beyond a radius of 1000 km, since all of the power is lost. North Dakota's wind energy is useless to New York and Florida and will remain so unless reversible fuel cells of some type are commercialized.

The use of North Dakota's winds to power Minnesota's cities would also, of course, involve infrastructure, the transmission lines themselves. The cost of the power from these lines would also be effected by how much was lost in transmission. Another factor is maintenance of these lines. Suppose a blizzard with high winds, or an ice storm, strikes North Dakota. Then imagine that you have to get crews across a lightly populated state to service these lines.

A big drawback to wind power is load leveling. If you have wind power, you must adjust the power produced from your other types of plants and do so predictably. If you don't do so in a controlled manner, you risk further losses, waste, or system failure. This sort of problem apparently becomes important when the percentage of wind generated power reaches 20 to 30%. I recall reading that it is a problem in Denmark.

Here, on page 5 of the PDF file, is a useful chart that I like to look at to understand energy flows:

http://www.llnl.gov/str/pdfs/12_98.1.pdf

It shows the overall efficiency of our energy. This particular version dates from 1997, but I don't imagine things have changed all that much. We see that at that time, the United States as a whole was consuming 32 quads (34 exajoules) of primary energy to produce 12 quads (13 exajoules - some of this electricity was imported from Canada and Mexico) of useful electricity. Of this electricity, about 1 quad (1 exajoule) was lost in transmission.

Thus on average, the US loses about 8% of the energy to transmission on average. However this overall figure includes places like New Jersey, where electricity is only shipped 30 or 40 km, and places like Los Angeles, where power can come from as far away as Oregon. I would expect that North Dakota wind generated electricity would probably lose well in excess of 10% of its energy before getting to Minnesota, more if you tried to ship it to Chicago.

At a certain distance, depending on local factors, the exercise becomes pointless. Whether it does so, of course, depends on generating cost. Some very cheap energy can be shipped long distances. New York City for instance buys power from Canada's hydroelectric generators and from Niagara Falls. If wind's production cost continues to fall with respect to natural gas, I would imagine that this wind could power some midwestern cities and towns could be produced quite profitably.

However, I am surprised at how frequently people over look the critical detail of transmission cost.

Transmission cost applies not only to electricity, but other forms of energy as well. It is particularly of important concern in the case of natural gas.

[htuttle]

15. Given how poorly farming has been doing lately

I'm hoping to start seeing more 'energy ranchers' popping up all over the Great Plains. The dreaded Alberta Clippers could become an asset.

And if there were lots of wind turbines, at least there'd be something to look at when you drive through it. :D