Power Plants All Over

No wind? No sun? This power plant solves renewable energy's biggest problem

Hannah Ziady, November 7, 2019 (CNN)

“…By supplying electricity from renewable sources even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, virtual power plant technology could help tackle the climate crisis…[Unlike conventional power plants, New Energy is] weather dependent and therefore much more difficult to control…[Virtual power plants (VPP) resolve that] by connecting disparate sources of renewable production, generation and storage. By pooling those resources, engineers can make them behave like a conventional power plant…[A] virtual power plant might be connected to 10 geographically dispersed wind farms to smooth the variability in output of each one. It could also include an energy storage component, so that if production from the wind farms outstrips demand a fleet of batteries can be charged so they can supply more power later…

click to enlarge

…Norwegian company Statkraft's 12,000 MW VPP, running in Germany since 2011,] uses a cloud-based artificial intelligence platform to connect more than 1,500 wind, solar and hydropower plants across Europe with electricity generation and storage facilities, such as batteries…Power generation forecasts and actual electricity production data are continuously fed into the virtual power plant from the connected plants. This is supplemented with market prices for energy, enabling Statkraft to match demand with supply in real time…” click here for more

Tweet