The following information
was requested under the
Freedom of Information Act, on April 7, 2002.
Data for consumed KW and net generation
KW, versus time, from beginning of operation to current date.
The following response was released by TVA on December 2, 2002.
In essence, it was an admission that they do not keep thorough records,
and a refusal to provide the requested information, which is available,
under the pretense that they already provided the information.
"With regard to the consumed KW, we do
not track station consumption, therefore, we have no records responsive
to this part of your request. With regard to the net generation data, on
May 16 I sent you copies of the
Green Power
Switch newsletters which contain the net generation data."
Other utilities, such as Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, track
and conveniently publicize very thorough details for both
consumed
KW and
net
generation KW for similar wind power plants. Why doesn't TVA?
It is interesting to see that consumed power can be as much as about
1-2% of rated power, or about 4-8% of expected average power based on
25% capacity factor. In a quick look at Wisconsin PSC's data, I
observed up to about 12 KW for one turbine on December 8, 2002.
Therefore, when the wind plant is not producing power due to low wind
or other problems, it may actually be increasing demand for
conventional power plants and their associated emissions, at a rate of
up to about 8% of expected average wind plant power. This is not a huge
amount, but it is also not an insignificant amount of additional air emissions due
to the wind power plant.
TVA already provides
detailed
production data for their solar power stations (although perhaps
with
buggy
javascript, and best viewed with iE). Why does TVA not provide
similar detailed data for the wind power plant?
