Arguments
Sabin 33 #28 - How reliable is wind energy?
Posted on 13 May 2025 by Ken Rice
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #28 based on Sabin's report.
As with solar energy, complete reliance on wind energy would pose intermittency challenges. However, wind, solar, and storage together can provide the majority of the country’s electricity without compromising reliability1, and energy efficiency and grid flexibility mechanisms can support a renewable energy-based grid. (Lovins 2017) Hydropower has also been found to support wind and solar by compensating for intermittency in those sources (Shan et al. 2020). Moreover, building more long-distance transmission infrastructure can enable greater reliance on wind and solar generation2, and linking offshore wind projects through offshore transmission networks is also expected to enhance grid reliability.3 A National Renewable Energy Laboratory report concluded that “wind power can support power system reliability” by providing “active power controls,”4 which are mechanisms for balancing the power generated by wind farms with the power consumed on the electricity grid (van Wingerden et al. 2017). And although the reliability of wind and solar energy was questioned following Texas’ widespread power outages in the winter of 2021, Texas’ grid failure was primarily caused by freezing natural gas infrastructure, rather than failures at wind and solar farms, though nuclear, coal, and wind also experienced disruptions at a smaller scale.5 (also Busby et al. 2021)
Wind energy has already been successfully incorporated into the United States’ electric grid at significant scale.6 Domestic energy production from wind more than tripled between 2011 and 2022, from 120 billion kilowatt-hours (2.9% of total energy production) to 435 billion kilowatt-hours (10.3% of total energy production).6 Some states have seen even more rapid growth. In 2021, wind energy accounted for 58% of electricity production in Iowa, and 43% of electricity production in Kansas.7
Wind power has enabled Iowa not only to reduce energy costs, but to generate additional revenue by selling excess power to neighboring states during shortages.8 Today, Iowa is considered one of the states with the most reliable energy systems.9 In California, electricity generated from wind power increased from roughly 3% in 2009, to roughly 7% in 2022.10 Electricity generated from natural gas declined from roughly 56% in 2009, to roughly 47% in 2022. Yet even with this increased reliance on wind power, California’s grid reliability has remained consistent, and largely above national averages.11 California has even been able to briefly meet 103% of its energy demands exclusively from renewable sources, demonstrating that a large economy can by powered by renewable energy.12 The UK has also made substantial progress utilizing wind power, which was responsible for 26.8% of overall energy production in 2022, and which helped stave off the worse impacts from the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.13
Footnotes:
[1] Eric Larson et al., Net-Zero American: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts: Final Report, Princeton University, 247 (Oct. 29, 2021), at 88 (noting that, “[t]o ensure reliability, all cases maintain 500-1,000 GW of firm generating capacity through all years,” compared to 7,400-9,900 GW for wind and solar in net-zero scenarios for 2050).
[2] See Shan et al. (2020) at 97 (noting that “[l]imiting inter-regional transmission capacity to a maximum of 2x current capacity . . . leads to slightly more gas w/ [carbon capture] and less wind”).
[3] Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, U.S. Dep’t of Energy, Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Study, at vii (March 2024).
[4] Erik Ela et al., Active Power Controls from Wind Power: Bridging the Gaps at xi, Nat’l Renewable Energy Laboratory, Jan. 2014; see also NREL Report Redefines Wind as a Grid Stabilizer, Not a Liability, Nat’l Renewable Energy Laboratory, Jan. 2014; Weihang Yan et al., Synchronous Wind: Evaluating the Grid Impact of Inverterless Grid-Forming Wind Power Plants, Nat’l Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2023 (preprint).
[5] Adriana Usero & Salvador Rizzo, Frozen windmills’ aren’t to blame for Texas’s power failure, Wash. Post, Feb. 18, 2021; Dionne Searcey, No, Wind Farms Aren’t the Main Cause of the Texas Blackouts, N.Y. Times, Feb. 17, 2021 (updated May 3, 2021).
[6] Wind Explained: Electricity Generation from Wind, U.S. Energy Information Administration (last visited March 25, 2024).
[7] Niccolo Conte, Which US State Generates the Most Wind Power? There’s a Clear Winner, World Economic Forum (April 26, 2022).
[8] Chazz Allen, Iowa Leads in Homegrown, Reliable, Renewable Energy, Gazette (November 12, 2022).
[9] Energy Rankings: Measuring States’ Energy Infrastructure, U.S. News and World Report (last visited March 25, 2024).
[10] Total System Electric Generation 2009-2022 with totals, California Energy Commission, (2022).
[11] Electric System Reliability Annual Reports, California Energy Commission, (2022).
[12] Lauren Sommer, California Just Ran on 100% Renewable Energy, but Fossil Fuels Aren’t Fading Away Yet, NPR (May 13, 2022).
[13] Georgina Rannard, Wind Generated a Record Amount of Electricity in 2022, BBC News, (January 6, 2023).
Skeptical Science sincerely appreciates Sabin Center's generosity in collaborating with us to make this information available as widely as possible.
One major aspect of grid reliability that is not mentioned very much, except by professional power engineers, is synchronous inertia, which is required for the frequency and voltage to remain in tolerance. Synchronous inertia is build in with hydro, nuclear, gas and coal. Wind, solar and batteries general do not have this. I know synchronous condensors, flywheels, grid forming inertia were mentioned in references, but these are not currently available at scale. These are discussed in the following Meeting the Challenge of Reliability on Today’s Electric Grids: The Critical Role of Inertia and "I was shocked when I've learned last week that most of the European countries have 50-80% of RE in the total generation mix. It's well known that during the event RE did not come to that party, no inertia, it provided little to zero voltage support which is essential in maintaining the stability of the grid" and "Virtually all the IBR’s are grid-following at this time. While there is a push to move to grid-forming IBR’s, I do not believe this would have made any difference in this event as they still do not provide the needed inertia. There is a major difference between rotational and synthetic inertia"
tder2012:
You made almost the same post on the solar thread. The answer is the same here. Batteries can be fitted with grid forming inverters that have synthetic inertia. The Hornsdale Power Reserve battery in Australia, one of the first big batteries, provided frequency and inertia protection to the grid at a cost 90% less than previous grid support. The inverters needed do not add much cost to the system.
Your first link says
"AEMO [Australian grid operator] expects a diversity of market incentives and new technologies to solve such challenges, but at present the pathways to a solution are not yet clear."
Hardly proof that renewable grids cannot be built.
I note that the second link you have says
"I've learned last week that most of the European countries have 50-80% of RE [renewable energy]"
Obviously this guy is not an electrical systems engineer or he would have known that. Why should I listen to a blog by a guy who has had his head in the sand for the past 5 years?
Your last link says "I do not believe this would have made any difference". Please provide links to people who know what effects would actually happen, not people who are speculating about what might happen. The cause of the Spainish blackouts has not yet been publically announced. Reading your link it appears that electrical engineers disagree on what needs to be done. Future research will determine the best way forward.
You have stilll not provided any evidence at all to support your claim your claim that it would be faster to build out a renewable plus nuclear power system than a renewable only system. You demanded that I provide evidence to you, although I already cited two peer reviewed papers supporting my claims, and you have only quoted hearsay.
When you demand evidence you must provide evidence. Changing the topic is conceding that you were worng.
"I know synchronous condensors, flywheels, grid forming inertia were mentioned in references, but these are not currently available at scale."
Synchronous condenser deployment scaling is limited only by our hazy and insufficient impressions of energy economics, which have been warped and shaped by inexpensive but ephemeral and (we belatedly discovered) harmful fossil fuels. Leaving aside short-term thinking of this sort which precludes stable and sustainable civilization of the kind we'd like to imagine possible, synchronous condensers are a mature technology ready for use, and have been for decades.
Synchronous condensers are a potentially ideal marriage with modernized energy sources such as PV and wind, which each with appropriate control feedback are natively able to respond to fluctating demand more rapidly than primary generation needing a throttle of some kind, whether that's control rods or a steam or natural gas valve.
Meanwhile, the cost of upscaling synchronous converter application pales in comparison to the capital needed to substantially expand our nuclear generation fleet. On a bar chart the difference would be instantly and starkly apparent. As well and thanks to fossil fuel legacy we already have a leg up on this— if we're smart like Australia where generators formerly spun up by combustion are now being used as synchronous condensers, conjoined with modernized primary energy supplies.
Have you read this report presented at the 2025 Georgia Tech Protective Relaying Conference "Assessing Inverter-Based Resources Modeling Gaps in Commonly Used Short-Circuit Programs". Cristian Paduraru P.E. (Experienced Transmission Relay Settings Engineer) provide this comment on LinkedIn "Just a heads up on what's coming if RE contribution will continue to increase: no ECHO logic will work as there will not be any strong source.
Also, the output will significantly be affected by load which is impossible to be properly captured in current short circuit programs.
Also, the simulaton in CAPE/Aspen may be irrelevant in absence of proper implementing the exact control algorithm in IBRs, generic models are a disaster, here's a paper just presented at Georgia Tech on this" here is the link to the paper https://www.ap-concepts.com/2025_PRC/modules/request.php?module=oc_proceedings&action=summary.php&id=73&a=Accept Do you have any comments on this?
I watch to see how electricity grids are meeting the Paris target of less than 100 grams of CO2 emitted per kilowatt-hour, averaged on an annual basis. I don't care how this target is met, South Australia is close (160), but you see BESS is barely a blip there and the rest of Australia is so far away from this target. So hopefully Australia can deploy much clean energy extremely quickly. They'll need copious quantities of synchronous condensers, flywheels, grid forming inertia, synchronous converter application, etc in very short order. See SA grid, along with the other grids in Australia, showing grams CO2 emitted per kilowatt-hour, averaged on an annual basis and the sources of electricity generation here https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA/12mo/monthly
Tder2012 @5 :-
Thank you for the "electricitymaps.com".
That shows Tasmania State as leading the nearby states by a country mile, so to speak. But Tasmania uses a colossal amount of hydro + a bit of wind power. Almost totally "renewables".
The South Australia State is doing fairly well, without hydro ~ but I see from other sources that the State's renewable electricity is usually in the 20-90% renewables range. Though sometimes poor [mid-evening with low wind . . . and yet sometimes around 90% with wind, mid-evening]. Daytimes well carried by solar. That State also has several synchronous condensers. My impression is that they would do well by doubling solar capacity, and quadrupling battery storage. Which sounds quite feasible over 10-20 years ~ since we can reasonably expect sodium-type storage batteries to become much cheaper during that time. (And nuclear plants remaining quite unnecessary.)
Yeah, those plans might be doable for South Australia, but SA is 7% of Australia's population, so hopefully they can do your plans on a much larger scale.
tder2012 at 4:
Your linked presentation does not say that a renewable energy grid cannot be controlled. It says that the current grid models need to be adjusted to work with grid inverters. No-one is surprised that when they change the hardware the grid runs with you need to change the software you use to run the grid.
At one of your links I saw an article that said grid forming inverters stabilize a renewable grid while grid following inverters destabilize the grid as renewable percentages get high. Apparently in many grids they are currently required to use grid following inverters because of the legacy of fossil fuels. As the grid switches to renewable the hardware to support the grid will have to be changed.
My understanding is that the existing turbines of thermal energy plants can cheaply be converted into synchronous condensers. Doug Bostroms' post at 3 appears to suggest that in Australia they have converted closed thermal power plants into synchronous condensers. Googling "thermal power plants into synchronous condensers" gives many hits saying it is cheap to convert closed thermal power plants into synchronous condensers. You need to find another tree to bark up.
Drax in the United Kingdom use carbon neutral thermal turbines burning wood pellets to contribute to grid stability (voltage and frequency). Read something on it years ago. They have a great article in laypersons language on the whole issue of grid stability here:
www.drax.com/power-generation/great-balancing-act-takes-keep-power-grid-stable/
Blackouts attributable to renewables in places like the UK with considerable renewables in the mix are uncommon. This is quite impressive with new technology. So the doubters claims of disaster have consistently failed to materialise. Spain has just had a big blackout that might have something to do with renewables but its rather unclear what caused it. But its the first such event. These things are clearly very uncommon.
There are obvious known technologies that help renewables grids remain stable. They will be added as required as renewables expand. Grid operators are not actually complete idiots. The public wont tolerate significant numbers of blackouts and neither will politicians so there will also be lots of pressure to make the system work seamlessly. Dont panic.
"Don't panic" good to know, I wasn't aware of anyone panicing, but spendid advice nonetheless. So also no need to panic about the Paris target for electricity grids to emit less than 100 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, averaged on an annual basis, correct? See all electricity grids here https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo/monthly this link specifically highlights Germany at 344, China is at 489, India varies from 560 to 750, Indonesia is at 640.
tder2012,
Reading this item and the comments I have learned and understand the following:
Quite a bit of useful information in the Electricmaps.com which you can dial in most every country .
Thanks for providing
I have previously used the EIA grid monitor for the US (also quite informative) along with the German version. The link provides the source data which helps understanding the stability and reliability issues.
For those countries that periodically achieve 100% or near 100% electric generation from wind and solar also have frequent periods of 10-30 days where fossil fuel electric generation comprises more than 50% of total electric generation. This points to the need for significant redundancy of renewable capacity and storage capacity necessary to achieve stability and reliability with wind and other renewables.
I don't care how grids get decarbonized, just get it done NOW. France did it 40 years ago by accident, only because they wanted energy security and independence, no fossil fuels to extract in France. Australia wants to do it with wind, solar, batteries, synchronous condensors, etc. I say go for it, get 'er done! Here are a few sites you can watch AUS grid generation mix, import, export between states, prices, etc (you can find sites like this for many other countries, states, etc but I like electricitymaps best as I am very concerned about CO2 and ghg emissions and I find its the best for showing that data. Also, it is a "one stop shop"). https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem & https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time&group=Detailed & https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/RenewEconomy/
Clean energy hits many roadblocks, often people ideologically opposed to them, we see this with solar, wind and also with nuclear. The No Nukes in the USA in the 70's were successful at blocking the build of nuclear power plants, but look at this article from US Energy Information Administration and see how much coal was built after 1980, fortunately they haven't build much since 2013. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50658
We are only really talking about electricity here, which is 20-25 % of global energy production. Oil is barely a blip in global electricity production (mostly diesel generators in small remote communities and islands). New England in USA uses oil occasionally, they seem to encounter natural gas supply issues more than typical, this is an article on the New England Independent System Operator (NEISO) website. "Nuclear, oil, and coal generators are critical on the coldest winter days when natural gas supply is constrained (as shown below). Coal- and oil-fired resources also make valuable contributions on the hottest days of summer when demand is very high or major resources are unavailable".
Anyway, the point I want to make is that oil is barely a blip in global electricity generation, yet it is the number one source of energy generation in the world, as you can see on this Our World in Data website https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?time=1970..latest Much decarbonization all over the world needs to be done in very short order.
tder2012:
We agree that decarbonizing as rapidly as possible is the target.
Oil is primarily used for transportation. As cars are switched to electric oil use will start to go down. Trains are already switching to electric (except in the USA). Electric trucks are being tested on the road. The cost savings for trucks switching to electric are substantial.
I understand electric freighters are economic up to about 1500 miles and some are being manufactured in China. Google says that some river freighters and ferries are the largest currently in service. Additional batteries can be loaded as containers on the freight deck and connected to the ships power, then switched at the next port.
Small planes have been built that are electric.
The key is to build out carbon free electricity as rapidly as possible and tax carbon emissions. As cheap electricity becomes more widely available and carbon more expensive, more users will switch to electric.
Vote for politicians who support more carbon free electricity!!