There is question if siting might be preferred on poorer
transmission to the grid as constraint payments may be lucrative
written by Kenneth Wegorowski on 2/7/2020 and edited and published on 4/20/2020
Cash cows roaming the windscapes?
"It is perhaps unsurprising that Whitelee, being the largest UK onshore wind farm and one of the earliest entrants into the constraint market, has received the largest constraint payment total. However, recent years have seen newer and smaller wind farms overtaking Whitelee, suggesting that the sites currently being chosen for wind farm development are in locations with poorer grid connection. Whether this is a deliberate choice, designed to maximise average earnings per MWh generated, is open to debate."
"Stronelairg received planning permission in spite of being behind a grid bottleneck and was subject to a Judicial Review due to its impact on wild land."
Is Chevelon Canyon area Cholla transmission line a grid bottleneck I wonder.
I discovered an energy co-op in Arizona that highlights it's offering of a salad bar to sheep, Arizona G&T Cooperatives.
On their website they state about their Apache Solar Project and it's overall energy delivery the following:
"Natural gas and coal generation at Apache Station are dispatched around the clock."
They have 77,053 solar panels! Each panel produces 340 watts when the sun is shining at it's fullest straight overhead, less as it's angled.
That's enough to power 77,053 TV sets so you can watch exaggerations about renewables flash across your screen as you find out that your power is mostly generated by gas and coal which is reliable clean energy that saves millions of lives and powers your energy hungry heat generating appliances you will not live without like your clothes washer and dryer.
Their Apache power station:
Their solar:
Note the word "steam", that is what you primarily see coming out of so called "smoke stacks" when you see pictures of "evil coal" power generating plants. Most of it is merely water vapor which is THE CAUSE of climate change. Carbon dioxide is a mere 4 miniscule particles per 10,000 particles of all other stuff in the air which 78% of is nitrogen, and carbon dioxide does nothing at all to affect climate. You have been had.
So their solar provides 20 MW with 77,053 plastic panels that will end up in a land fill if lucky after 20 years as they rot and crack slowly in the sun but their other primary sources of your power which will always be your primary sources unless they go to nuclear provide 30.25 times that amount as they are reliable and energy efficient AND the coal emissions are all recycled back into the Earth due to climate changing constantly as well as the emissions from natural gas are recycled back into the Earth.
Delivering power in "the grid" is like water flowing through massive amounts of interconnected water pipes (see page 30) if a lot of water is flowing out one or a number of them more water can flow through the main ones but if little is flowing out the others then this flow slows or stops in the main lines. This can even be referred to as a bottleneck as that is a very broad term. The stop of the flow out of the system causes the rest of the flow to bottleneck.
We often think ONLY of a bottleneck as being a slowing down of a flow but pressure is a factor in flow so there can be a bottleneck but if there is more pressure there can be more flow even so much as to be somewhat explosive flow. Shake up a bottle of soda, pop off the cap, and watch it's massive flow shooting out the top of the bottleneck. Pour it normally and it's much different. There is a bottleneck in both situations to this exemplifies how the term bottleneck can be used to indicate various situations and manipulatively.
In transmission lines there is a maximum capacity. For example a line may have 2,000 MW capacity. If other lines drop out of service, there can be surge that overwhelms that line causing uncontrollable overloads. The line which is also connected (the grid) causing it to fail even though local power utilities are only putting out power that it can handle it's receiving too much load from somewhere else. Thus they typically will not allow generation in that line to be 1,400 MW for local transmission so there's always that buffer. Wind farms are so chaotic in their adding power to grid transmission lines that it poses significan challenges and real threats to grid energy delivery that simply were not there prior to all this renewable madness.
It's stated also,
copyright 2020 Kenneth Wegorowski assistant to the assistant engineer of the universe