These Grid regulation systems wouldn't be needed if the eco-loons weren't insisting on Wind and Solar installations. It is the constantly variable and intermittent nature of these non-cost effective generation systems, that force Utilities to spend even more money to mitigate effects of the eco-loon generation ideas.

Unfortunately the ammount of combined battery and online generation needs to keep the grid stable, has beem found to be about 5 times the generation capacity of the eco-loony Wind and Solar generation.

So if you install 100 megawatts of Wind be prepared to install up to 500 megawatts of batteries to stabilize the grid.
Some Bargain! The Loons would never include that in the cost of wind and solar. Do you have any idea of what those costs would be at about $1000 per Kilowatt? Do the math yourself. For every 100 MW a small wind power station or about a 100 windmill farm, over and above the cost of the windmills, you need to spend up to an additional half a $ Billion dollars for batteries!

Chock up the costs to pure Lunancy.

Nothing like making electic autos an economic impossibility when you drive up the cost from 75 cents of electricity per gallon equivalent of gasoline to $7.50 per gallon equivalent of gasoline. Who would plug-in then?

Good to see that Altair is availing themselves of some of the energy funding. Hopefully they will use some funds to drive down the cost of their process. Using NanoSafe batteries in hybrid buses would be a good fit for their technology. Just charge the batteries at start or end of run and the electric range will increase by 30-40%.

Altair technology claims up to 20k cycles and their fast charge capability has been confirmed by 3rd party testing.
A good company with a good product that should excel.

V2G and some UPS backup in homes could provide enough buffer for brown outs in a lot of places. It was estimated that we could have about 20% renewable across the nation with just grid management. Southern California Edison has 20% renewable now and does not require any special treatment. We can do pumped hydro with as little as 200 feet of elevation for power when the wind and sun are not providing enough.

Denmark generates 20% of electricity by wind turbines, but over the year could consume only half of this amount. The rest is sold abroad, at highly depressed rates, sometimes for free, and sometimes Denmark even pays to get rid of unwanted electricity. It is not possible to domestically consume more, because constant swings back and fore from wind farms would destabilize the grid. Spinning reserve capacity, ready to pick-up when wind is too slow or too fast to generate electricity does not matter: it is not lack of generated electricity, it is speed and amount of change of electricity feed over different locations which destabilize the grid and lead to blackouts. Denmark is able to consume such high percentage of wind electricity only because it uses highly maneuverable hydropower of Norway to keep things in balance. For grid, say, in US Midwest the limit would be around 5%, with half of this amount backed-up by spinning gas turbines.

Recently Denmark began to FINE wind electricity producers for producing electricity at wrong time:

http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article658546.ece

Interesting, another 10% of electricity consumption of Denmark comes from imported nuclear power.

So, wind electricity is not only expensive, it becomes more expensive if its share grows (no special measures are needed when wind supply 0.5% of electricity; at higher percentage wind turbines should be more and more backed-up by spinning gas turbines or hydropower), and at more than 5% of consumption it begin to destabilize the grid, regardless of spinning reserve. Only very few small local grids could economically supplement high percentage of their electricity by wind; one example is small towns in Alaska relied on diesel generators for their electricity.

Altair batteries, situated right at the location of wind farm could increase (double?) share of acceptable into the grid wind electricity, but already high cost of wind electricity will become simply prohibitory expensive.

PV, on other hand, holds much more promise. It is more predictable, generation is more stable and generally conforms to peak of consumption, and PV could form distributed grid. Price of PV panels is dropping fast too.

Ai vin:

Linked over the continent wind farms theoretically will require little back-up. But rapidly shifting electricity flows over the continent from wind farm which stops generating to wind farm which starts generating is exact thing which destabilizes the grid, producing so-called surges and ultimately – blackout.

We need to do two seemingly contradictory things before the energy situation improves.
1. Nationalize the grid,
2. Micro-localize energy production and storage.

The local monopolies held by power companies are ruining this country and preventing forward progress. We have too many "Mr. Burns and Homer Simpsons" running the power supply ... one blinded by greed, the other satisfied to sit on his ass forever. Look at the lightning speed with which communications changed once Ma Bell was broken up. Look at how quickly the federal government was able to develop the Interstate system.

Central production of energy is wasteful (a large proportion is lost in transmission and friction) and it's strategically dangerous.

We have been lucky so far that the giant blackouts in the North have only happened in the summer. Try one in the middle of a cold winter and millions of people would die or become refugees. During the Great Depression you could chop up the furniture and stick in the boiler to get heat. Today a modern gas furnace won't even light without grid power. Even the gas is supplied by an electronic valve that stops working without electricity.

If the outage lasted long enough to freeze pipes the damage would be in the Trillions and make 9/11 look like a holiday.

A gas fuel cell in the basement that supplies heat and power would be more efficient than grid electricity, greener, and with economies of scale probably no more expensive than what the average home owner pays for a furnace and water heater.

Supplement that with solar and wind where appropriate and everyone would be happier, healthier and safer. PLUG, GE, and United Tech...all have products ready to go, but it will take a disaster before anyone unseats Mr. Burns.

Ask yourself, has the power plant in your area done anything new in 30 years? How much more black coal smoke do we need in the atmosphere? Has the electric meter or wires coming to your house changed in the last 50 years? If not, may be it's time.

In the early 80s we could not have imagined the iPhone. Imagine what a consumer market could do for energy!

"But if free market forces are allowed - we will see home owners flock to CHP/RPU.."

People have been able to have distributed generation in their homes for quite a while, butI do not see a "flock" of people spending the money for alternative local power.

Bravo creativeforce.

ai_vin
OTOH, when people disparage wind and solar energy they seem to forget that it is wind AND solar energy - plus all the other renewables.

I don't think they forget. They just like to blow off anyway they can. If people don't take them seriously they seem justified to make any rant in the hope of convincing the doubting thomas's or totally gullible but if that doesn't happen the fact that it's a free shot in the hope to find a target for the abuse.
What is there to lose?

er - well...

@SJC

Germany uses a system of In-Feed Tariffs(FITs). FITs have been shown to be the most cost effective way of promoting renewable energy. When combined with Net Metering they allow even average home owners to invest in green energy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNZgjEDPe24
http://www.solarserver.de/solarmagazin/anlagejanuar2008_e.html

It may be both central and distributed generation. I can not see the private sector building long transmission lines, unless there is a bundle of short term profit in it. The government will probably have to build them, just like the roads, bridges and ports and the corporations will benefit from those investments.

Quoth creativforce:

A gas fuel cell in the basement that supplies heat and power would be more efficient than grid electricity, greener, and with economies of scale probably no more expensive than what the average home owner pays for a furnace and water heater.

RPUs will not change the demand for HVDC.  The RPU makes no sense to run when there's no demand for heat, and HVDC can bring in RE from long distances offset the need for RPU fuel.  AAMOF, if your RPU fuel is something like bio-methane, you can use it to fill gaps in the power from intermittent RE sources.