Wind turbines provide more than 31 000 MW of power worldwide, 30 percent more than a year ago, substituting for generators that otherwise might have pumped 200 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But there's a hitch: wind turbines often ply turbulent gusts and therefore spit out an irregular stream of electricity that is tough for power grids to swallow.
High-tech solutions, capable of regulating what is otherwise a choppy stream of electricity from wind turbines, are at hand. Large-scale energy storage devices and devices based on advanced power electronics--essentially a large-scale application of semiconductor technology--are massaging and managing power flows, enabling turbines to contribute mightily to grids without putting power systems at risk.
Perhaps nowhere is the potential of those new technologies so evident as in the state of Hawaii, whose isolated power grids could not otherwise risk taking full advantage of the archipelago's abundant, renewable resource. In fact, with its lush, endless trade winds and growing commitment to wind power, Hawaii's Big Island is emerging as a laboratory of the future of the technology. As wind power becomes a steadier and more reliable resource, it could help wean power producers all over the state from their dependence on costly imported oil.
Hawaii's solutions to integrating modest levels of wind power on small, isolated grids may foreshadow the installation of truly large-scale wind power in mainland networks five or 10 years from now. "What's happening in the Hawaiian Islands is a peek at the future," says Bob Zavadil, an expert on wind power at the Arlington, Va.-based power systems analysis firm Electrotek Concepts Inc. "They're on the leading edge."
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