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Table of Contents

List of Tables xi

List of Figures xii

Chapter 1: The Future Role of Wind in the Electric Power Sector

1.1 Contribution of my Dissertation 1

1.2 Wind Power Today 4

1.3 Birth of the Modern Wind Industry 4

1.3.1 The Danish Approach to Wind Power 6

1.3.2 The American Approach to Wind Power 7

1.4 Wind Turbine Technology 8

1.5 Challenges Posed by Wind 12

1.5.1 Intermittency of Wind Resources 13

1.5.2 Spatial Distribution of Wind Resources 16

1.6 Lessons from Northern Europe? 18

1.7 The Future Role of Wind Power 20

1.8 CO2 Mitigation in the Electric Power Sector 24

1.8.1 Renewable Technologies 25

1.8.2 Non-renewable Technologies 26

1.8.3 System Architecture 28

1.8.4 Environmental Impacts 29

1.9 Outline of the Thesis: Estimating the Cost and Environmental Impacts 30

of Large-Scale Wind

1.10 References to Chapter 1 32

Chapter 2: The Cost of Wind’s Intermittency: Is There a Threshold?

2.1 Chapter Overview 38

2.2 Managing Variability in Electric Power Systems 39

2.3 Defining the Cost of Wind’s Intermittency 42

2.4 Review of Wind Integration Studies 49

2.5 Wind at Small Scale 51

2.6 Wind at Large Scale 56

2.7 Conclusions and Implications for Energy Modeling 58

2.8 References to Chapter 2 62

Chapter 3: Assessing the Cost of Large-Scale Wind

3.1 Chapter Overview 64

3.2 Previous Modeling Work 65

3.3 Model Numerics, Implementation, and Challenges 66

3.4 Model Description 69

3.5 Technologies in the Model 72

3.5.1 Wind Turbines 72

3.5.2 Gas Turbines 73

3.5.3 Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) 76

3.5.4 High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Transmission 78

3.5.5 Assumptions About Scale 80

3.6 Wind Data and Site Geometry 80

3.7 Model Results 82

ix

3.8 Exploring the Benefits of CAES 89

3.8.1 Description of a Reduced-Form Model 89

3.8.2 Cost Comparison with an H2 System 92

3.9 Conclusions Drawn from the Model 95

3.10 References to Chapter 3 99

Chapter 4: Environmental Impacts of Wind Power

4.1 Chapter Overview 102

4.2 Avian Mortality 103

4.3 Noise 106

4.4 Aesthetic Impacts of Wind Farm Development 108

4.4.1 A Renewed Debate: Conservation versus Preservation 108

4.4.2 NIMBYism and Wind Power 110

4.4.3 Addressing Aesthetic Concerns 112

4.4.4 Aesthetic Considerations versus Land Requirements 116

4.5 Summary of Environmental Impacts and the Path Forward 118

4.6 References to Chapter 4 119

Chapter 5: The Climatic Impact of Wind Turbines

5.1 Chapter Overview 122

5.2 Wind in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer 123

5.3 Model Parameterization 124

5.4 The Relationship between Added Drag and Wind Farms 126

5.4.1 Power Dissipation in the Model 126

5.4.2 Relating Power Dissipated to Electricity Produced 127

5.5 GCM Results 131

5.6 Comparison of Direct and Indirect Climatic Effects 148

5.6.1 Defining a Metric 148

5.6.2 Estimating the Ratio of Direct to Indirect Climate Impacts 149

5.7 Conclusions 155

5.8 References to Chapter 5 157

Chapter 6: Thesis Conclusions and Future Work

6.1 Chapter Overview 160

6.2 The Costs of Wind’s Variability: Is There a Threshold? 161

6.3 The Cost of Large-Scale Wind 162

6.4 Environmental Impacts from Wind 164

6.5 Future Work 165

6.5.1 Decarbonizing the Electric Power Sector 165

6.5.2 Wind 167

6.5.3 Clean Coal 170

6.5.4 Integration Issues 171

6.5.5 Proposed Modeling Work 172

6.5.6 Summary 174

6.6 References to Chapter 6 175

List of Tables

Table 2.1 – Summary of wind integration studies and their cost 50

estimates for intra-hour load-following and regulation

Table 3.1 – Cost and efficiency parameters used in the optimization model 71

Table 3.2 – Carbon tax at which CAES and H2 storage systems become 92

cost-effective over GTCC

Table 4.1 – Comparative avian risk in the US 105

Table 4.2 – Comparison of different sounds with wind turbines 108

Table 5.1 – Estimates of α: the ratio of direct to indirect climatic 155

impacts produced by wind power

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1 – Power production from wind turbines versus wind speed 12

Figure 2.1 – Stylized picture of supply and demand 41

Figure 2.2 – Schematic illustration of the economics of intermittent wind 44

Figure 2.3 – Theoretical load duration curve 46

Figure 2.4 – Schematic illustration of the average cost of electricity 48

versus the fraction of wind energy serving demand

Figure 3.1 − Illustration of the convergence problem 68

Figure 3.2 – Model geometry and map of US wind potential 70

Figure 3.3 – Optimal capacities as a function of carbon tax 84

Figure 3.4 – Marginal cost of carbon mitigation as a function of the 86

fractional reduction in emissions

Figure 3.5 – The average cost of electricity as a function of the fractional 88

reduction in emissions

Figure 3.6 – The four functions used in the reduced-form model 90

Figure 3.7 – Plot of cost derivative as a function of carbon tax 94

Figure 4.1 – Comparison of good and bad aesthetic designs for wind farms 115

Figure 5.1 – An energy extracting actuator disc, which is used as a 128

simplified representation of a wind turbine

Figure 5.2 – Wind farm array and temperature response 133

Figure 5.3 – Energy dissipation versus drag 135

Figure 5.4 – Linear coefficient (slope) of climatic response in the NCAR 137

linearity ensemble

Figure 5.5 – Mean climatic response over various masks versus δP 140

Figure 5.6 – Schematic illustration of the linear scaling assumption 144

Figure 5.7 – Surface temperature response (δT2 m -air) to two different spatial 145

configurations of wind-farm array and δCD

Figure 5.8 – Zonal measures of climatic response 147

Figure 5.9 – Hypothetical trajectories for carbon emissions and wind 151

power for the next three centuries

Figure 5.10 – Hypothetical atmospheric concentration of CO2 over the next three centuries 15