Wind farms to play key role in shift to green energy

Britain's grid operator National Grid said on Friday that electric cars, smart meters and new ways to store energy could help balance power supply and demand by 2020 when the country would lean more heavily on wind farms and nuclear plants. 

In its report, the company said that extra back-up for variable wind power was not the only solution available. It added that finding ways to enable consumers to reduce demand could play an important role in balancing electricity supply and demand coming years.

EU member nations and Britain have agreed to generate their energy needs from renewable sources by 2020 to help reduce carbon emissions.

For Britain this would entail a sharp increase in the number of wind farms to generate power which would leave a large portion of its power supply at the mercy of the country's capricious weather.

Also bigger nuclear power plants will be built over the next few decades to generate a greater share of electricity raising the risk that future nuclear outages would require a large amount of back-up power to keep the lights burning.

According to a spokesman of the National Grid, the traditional thinking was that you needed more back-up generation, but now there are some really good ways to reduce future demand.

National Grid, which operates the electricity transmission system and gas network across Great Britain, has also pointed to better wind forecasting, sophisticated control systems and new technologies to boost operating of back-up supplies.

With the increase in electricity generation from wind, reserve requirements are projected to rise from the current 4,000 MW to 8,000 MW according to the report. A thousand megawatts meet the requirements of about 1 million homes.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic in Kansas, US, wind energy seems to be gaining increasing popularity as the state known for its wheat supply to the country's bread industry looks to harness its lesser known resource- wind to emerge an exporter of wind energy. Among the more recent addition's that the state's energy grid hooked up, is the Meridian Way Wind Farm constructed in 2008.

The Wind Farm has changed both the landscape as well as the economics of the rural Kansas town of Concordia for the better, most people agree.

The wind-farm could pave the way for more such farms and bring in millions of dollars through investments in manufacturing sector in the region which lies in the country's wind belt, experts point out.

But there is one problem that will need to be addressed to realise the full wind potential - the state will need to find ways to move power from thinly populated areas that have a steady supply of wind to urban centers and beyond. This will require the construction of high voltage transmission lines that will need billions of dollars worth of investment.

Also there remains the problem of congestion of existing lines, and, at times during the year there is so much congestion, with so much power trying to get through the transmission lines, that the wind turbines have to be turned off.