Wind power meets record demand in Spain: industry group

Stupid headline. There was no record demand - the article quite clearly states "energy useage [sic] was low because most Spaniards were still asleep."

Who wants peak power production for a "brief period"? What about peak production during peak consumption periods? You know, when they really need it...

this is exactly the direction we should be going. With improved technology in both generating and storing energy it's really possible that western economies could shift away from their dependence on oil, which we can all agree, is a Good Thing.

As has been said, this is exactly a bad thing.

Wind power produces on average 11% of Spain's electricity demand. It can contribute on the order of maybe 1-2% to baseload, the rest is distributed among spikes and lulls lasting from anywhere between hours to weeks.

All these spikes above what can be counted as baseload has to be met with liberal application of natural gas turbines and coal spinning reserve. The highest spikes in wind prodoction can't be absorbed at all; if you look at West Texas the wind producers actually have to pay ERCOT to accept their electricity 20% of the time(and they do pay the grid to take their power at up to $35/MWh at times, which is less than what the government pays them in feed in tarriffs, production tax credits...).

With improved technology in both generating...

Generating is the easy part; most of what you pay for is electricity distribution. The hard part is distribution and wind makes that part much harder(but wind producers have no incentive to solve it since they get reimbursed by the government no matter what). The grid operators rely heavily on the fact that energy is moving from the usual producers to the usual consumers in a singly-connected graph; it would be difficult and very costly to shuffle large amounts of electricity from anywhere in the continent to anywhere else in the continent with the two endpoints just jumping around at random.

... and storing energy it's really possible that western economies could shift away from their dependence on oil, which we can all agree, is a Good Thing.

The problem is that we've worked to crack the electricity storage problem for over a century and it has ALWAYS been worth trillions if you could achieve it. The best all-round(when you consider cost, efficiency, density) ways to store energy we've come up with is the lead-acid battery(first unit built in 1859) and pumped hydro-storage for the grid(first plant built in 1890).

If you're going to insist that we burn coal and gas until wind mills and solar PV/thermal can take over we're going to continue burning a heck of a lot of more coal than advisable. Perfection is the enemy of good.

If you're going to insist that we burn coal and gas until wind mills and solar PV/thermal can take over we're going to continue burning a heck of a lot of more coal than advisable. Perfection is the enemy of good.

I agree with the majority of what you said.

However, an inperfect infrastructure leads to chaos. We'll have to continue burning fossil fuels in order to continue existing in our current capacity, or even to continue existing at 1/2 capacity.

Would you be happy if all you had available was spoiled meat and rotten vegetables because the shift to solar and wind power was rushed and inefficient? Unfortunately 11% of Spains electricity is no where near enough, especially seeing as Spain is not a large consumer of electricity, nor are they even a terribly populous country.

We do need to change our infrastructure, that's a certainty, but moving to innovation for the sake of innovation is not always the wisest choice.

However, an inperfect infrastructure leads to chaos. We'll have to continue burning fossil fuels in order to continue existing in our current capacity, or even to continue existing at 1/2 capacity.

I didn't say fossil fuels, I said coal. Coal is the big problem, it's half the worlds CO2 emissions and it's nearly trivial to replace it with nuclear power. Sweden, France and some US states have already done so; why can't the rest of you?

However, an inperfect infrastructure leads to chaos. We'll have to continue burning fossil fuels in order to continue existing in our current capacity, or even to continue existing at 1/2 capacity.

I didn't say fossil fuels, I said coal. Coal is the big problem, it's half the worlds CO2 emissions and it's nearly trivial to replace it with nuclear power. Sweden, France and some US states have already done so; why can't the rest of you?

Carter Era zoning laws and Nuclear regulation screwed the pooch on nuclear energy. That and this country has outlawed breeder reactors meaning the only way to actually build a proper plant and deal with the resultant waste is to create a safely zoned storage facility. Problem is the regulations are so tight there are exactly no available locations in the United States to deal with the waste. Meaning you have to ship all of the waste generated, by truck, to Nevada.

Effectively, without a law change, you'll never see nuclear become a big player in the US energy market. Also don't disregard the other regulations that continue US coal dependence. The anti-logging laws are what prevent the "paperizing" of the facilities.

For sure the coal lobby is not stupid. Supress solar thermal, promote wind, keep supporting agitation against nuclear,......